Strategic Planning for Quality - Essay Example

"Strategic Planning for Quality" is a great example of a paper on the health system. Formulation of a successful strategic plan is a difficult task in any organization’s leadership. The process of implementation or turning the strategy into operational reality is even more difficult as Parsley & Corrigan (1999) point out. A key challenge to strategy implementation for organizations today is the implementation measures to make quality a major competitive edge. The process of successful implementation of a strategic plan for quality is dependent on a myriad of factors, some of which might facilitate the implementation process while others might hinder the process.

One of the key success factors is increased involvement in the provision of service products or services. (Li1 et al, 2008) In a healthcare organization for instance, among the most common causes of unintended harm to patients globally are incidents of wrong medication by physicians. Thus, quality improvement in such organizations needs to include safer prescribing, dispensing, and administering of medicines in order to improve consumer safety. Another critical factor to quality improvement is the process of recruitment and retention of professionals (Li1 et al, 2008). This is particularly crucial to achieving the desired objectives. In a health care organization, this includes continuous improvement of quality and safety of health care services. To achieve this, an organization’s human resource department should need to be efficient in the process of allocating specific responsibilities to individuals based on their qualifications, training, and experience. 

One of the factors that may hinder successful achievement of the goal of quality is existence of a ‘blame’ culture within an organization (Hrebiniak, 2008). Errors in an organization occur as a result of and many contributing factors and the design or organizational system. It is thus vital for an organization to make the necessary improvements to its system design and promote a ‘no blame culture in which people are more likely to report errors and expect a constructive response. Finally, poor allocation of resources may hinder the successful implementation of a strategic plan (Li1 et al, 2008). This involves wastage of resources, causing a reduction in the ‘value for money and reducing productivity for products or services. This needs to be solved by reducing wastage of resources such as money, time, and goodwill, among other resources. In summary, the above factors are essential in achieving the goal of quality during strategy implementation.

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