QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY – A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Quality management has evolved in business for already a century. It was a continuous development; new concepts have emerged and have been used without giving up on previously developed constructs. For example, Shewhart has used the PDCA cycle under an initial form in 1939, but it is still widely used as a core construct of the ISO 9000 quality management family of standards. The question we address within this article is how quality management has been adopted within the healthcare industry, probably one of the most reticent industries when it comes to adopting new technologies and solutions. In order to answer this question, we firstly review the quality management concepts developed within the healthcare industry. Secondly, we detail a framework for the adoption of quality management initiatives (QMIs) in other industries, as a reference for managers working in the healthcare industry to guide their actions. In the third part, a review of the most relevant quality management initiatives within the healthcare industry are presented. The fourth part is a presentation of the most common issues related to process management in the healthcare industry, one of the most important areas related to quality management these days. The fifth part concludes with some advices for healthcare industry managers who are to further adopt quality management in their organizations.