Transition in quality: from quality assurance to strategic quality management.
The 1990s and beyond present formidable challenges to health-care providers, including clinical laboratories and pathology departments. However, numerous opportunities lie within these challenges. Discovering these opportunities and exploiting them will be critical success factors for future survival. Quality assurance, continuous quality improvement, and strategic and financial planning are all activities used to a varying extent by clinical laboratories. The cumulative potential benefits to an organization in which these activities are integrated can far exceed their sum as individual components. Coordinating these interdependent processes is the basis for managing strategically. The experience of one organization's efforts to plan and develop such a strategy is presented and discussed.
Weiss
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RL
University of Utah.
Ahlin
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PA
Hawker
C D
CD
Schumm
C L
CL
D002017:Budgets; D005568:Forms and Records Control; D007591:Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; D007755:Laboratories, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D008332:Management Quality Circles; D017146:Models, Organizational; D010337:Pathology Department, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D010934:Planning Techniques; D011367:Professional Staff Committees; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D012107:Research Design; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014481:United States