Read the case study “Memorial Hospital” in Chapter 4 of your text. Respond to the guided response below in a three- to four-page paper.

Discuss various methods for measuring quality in a hospital. Make a point of explaining your reasoning.

Explain the potential costs and quality failures for Memorial Hospital, as well as how each can be measured.

Discuss TQM ideas or techniques that Janice could use to assist Memorial in focusing on providing quality health care.

Examine the methods Memorial could employ to evaluate the quality of health care it provides.

Your paper should be written in paragraphs (no bullet points) and supported by the concepts outlined in your text as well as additional scholarly sources.

Study of a case

Memorial Hospital is a 600-bed facility that is privately owned. The hospital offers a comprehensive range of health-care services, including a full laboratory and X-ray facility, an emergency room, an intensive care unit, a cardiac care unit, and a psychiatric ward. The majority of these services are provided by other hospitals in the metropolitan area. Memorial has purposefully avoided becoming involved in any specialized fields of medicine or acquiring highly specialized diagnostic equipment because it was determined that such services would be prohibitively expensive. The GeneralHospital, which is only a few miles away from Memorial, is affiliated with the local School of Medicine and provides cutting-edge services in those specialized areas. Rather than competing with General Hospital for special services, Memorial Hospital has focused on providing high-quality general health care at an affordable price. In comparison to the much larger General Hospital, Memorial emphasizes personal attention to each patient from a nursing staff that takes pride in its work. Indeed, the hospital has begun to place advertisements in newspapers and on television emphasizing its patient-centered care.

However, the hospital’s administrator, Janice Fry, is concerned about the hospital’s ability to deliver on its promises, and she fears that failing to provide the level of health care patients expect will drive patients away. Janice recently met with hospital management to discuss her concerns. The meeting raised some concerns about how to ensure the hospital’s quality of care. Jessica Tu, director of nursing, posed the question, “How do we measure health-care quality?” Do we give patients a questionnaire when they leave, asking if they were satisfied with their care? That does not seem to answer the question because we can make a patient happy while providing poor health care.” Several other questions were raised regarding the hospital’s efforts to reduce costs. Some people were concerned that focusing on costs would have a negative impact on quality. They contended that when a person’s life is at stake, cost should not be an issue.

Janice began to ponder these questions after the meeting. She had recently read that some businesses were using total quality management (TQM) to improve their quality. She thought it was a good idea if it could be used in a hospital.