Quality Management and Accountability - Essay Example

Key to the success of the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) programs are seven characteristics namely, the amount of influence exerted by the change agents, their responsibility and autonomy in specific areas of assignments, space for innovative ideas, adaptability to change, satisfaction, teamwork and shared vision coupled with a benchmarking criterion towards the objectives (Weeks, Helms & Ettkin, 1995). These characteristics rest upon a common a propellant perception of agents concerning the needed change.

The new millennium heralded a phase of new challenges in many sectors, and so healthcare organizations haven’t been spared either. With the expectation of taming escalating costs, pressures to modernize, harmonize and reconcile quality with the former have force their way to accreditation boards, the media and concerned agencies. Embracing partnerships becomes unavoidable under these circumstances. Quality improvement, therefore, becomes more of a “team sport” that engages individual centered processes into a comprised common vision.

Precisely, teams are collaborative integral components of quality improvement efforts involving persons operating either from the same or different disciplines but with a shared vision of optimizing patient-service outcomes (Ovretveit, 1999). Notably, success within healthcare organizations operates more or less like powerful sport cars whose quick movements depends on the engine inexistence and the control mechanics applied. Employee engagement is the hallmark of connectivity within any organization.

An engaged personnel gives an organization the power it so requires to make tangible moves towards its mission with an accelerated propensity in compared to those of the competitors. From the top management down the apex of leadership role, a synergetic approach with results concerning the work load only comes with prior and proper understanding and agreement on the course taken (Weeks, Helms & Ettkin, 1995). Accordingly, success comes with assured, climatic readiness for change. The relationship between physicians directly responsible for matters of healthcare and hospital executives charged with administrative responsibilities spanning from regulatory obligations to resource control is critical to any aspect of quality improvement process.

The real enemy to the process of change lies in a dysfunctional healthcare system (Fawcett, et al., 1995). As mentioned above, there needs to be commonality in values and concerns share by both physicians and healthcare executives as the basic framework for successful communication bridging the hierarchical gap towards a collaborative, as opposed to confrontational/competitive relationship (Bero, et al., 1998). A functional workforce-engagement criterion holds the key to clinical priorities with regards to useful new technologies required as well as essentiality of scientific methodologies in tandem with evidence-based decision making.

Further, understanding and agreement are important planning, implementation, and assessment tools. According to the case study done by Weeks, Helms, and Ettkin (1995), the degree of understanding and agreement of the course taken by healthcare entities lacks uniformity with wide discrepancies over perceptive responses touching on matters of change. Whereas the need for change is plausible in the responses from the executive wing