title: The role of quality control circles in sustained improvement of medical quality.
abstract: We used quality control circles (QCC) followed by the PDCA Deming cycle and analyzed the application of QCC to the sustained improvement of a medical institution in Zhejiang province. Analyses of the tangible and intangible achievements of QCC revealed that the achievement indices for reductions in internal errors, reductions in costs, improvements in the degree of patient satisfaction, improvements in work quality, and improvements in economic performance were 109.84% ± 16.47%, 135.04% ± 50.33%, 126.26% ± 53.69%, 100.58% ± 22.83%, and 104.07% ± 5.45%, respectively. The improvements in these areas were 61.12% ± 13.2%, 60.47% ± 28.91%, 34.41% ± 22.96%, 49.22% ± 25.39%, and 73.70% ± 5.24%, respectively. The intangible achievements were reflected as follows: 5% of QCC members showed an activity growth value of 1-2 points, 83% 1-2 points, 12% more than 2 points. As a result, QCC activity showed prominent results in fostering long-lasting improvement in the quality of medical institutions in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. In short, QCC can be used as an effective tool to improve medical quality.
authors: Department of Pharmacy, The First Affiliated hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 79 QingChun Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310000 People's Republic of China.
authors: Lin-Run
authors: LR
authors: Wang
authors: Yang
authors: Y
authors: Wang
authors: Yan
authors: Y
authors: Lou
authors: Ying
authors: Y
authors: Li
authors: Xing-Guo
authors: XG
authors: Zhang
keywords: Medical quality; Quality control circle (QCC)
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