Introduction
An organization’s success comes from different management aspects, including decent working culture, excellent management, employee satisfaction, quality products and services, and customer satisfaction. The quality of products determines client contentment, and the enhancement of the quality of products and services improves customer satisfaction (TQM Fundamentals, Week 1). There are various quality management techniques, with most originating from Japan, which is committed to delivering quality products. These management techniques have attributes that are similar to Total Quality Management (TQM) (TQM Fundamentals, Week 1). Improvement of quality helps a company to become competitive in the local and global market. Apart from quality products, an organization needs strategic plans to use its competitive edge over its competitors. This paper offers advice to the Welsh hospital in Dubai on improving quality to be competitive in the global market.
How to Improve Quality to be Competitive Globally
There needs to be a definition of quality in the healthcare system or a hospital setting to identify methods and strategies to improve healthcare. Quality in healthcare means improving the operations and services offered to ensure the best patient outcomes (TQM Fundamentals, Week 3). The quality improvements include employees’ excellent performance, equipping the hospital sufficiently to treat various medical conditions, restructuring financing of services, and proper use of resources to ensure a streamlining of operations (Kasiri et al., 2017). The various quality dimensions need to be defined to understand the areas that require improvement.
In such healthcare facilities as Welsh Hospital, there are six quality dimensions; when they are improved, it increases the competitive edge against its rivals and ensures better service to patients. The six qualities require that healthcare services be effective, efficient, accessible, patient-centered, equitable, and safe (World Health Organization, 2018). Effectiveness in healthcare means delivering healthcare services driven by evidence-based research that guarantees improved healthcare outcomes to individuals and their communities. Evidence-based practices demand that services offered in a healthcare facility are influenced by scientific research to identify their effectiveness and to improve patients’ outcomes. Healthcare efficiency means delivering healthcare services by maximizing the available resources while avoiding wastage. The proper management of these resources guarantees the smooth running of the facility, ensuring satisfaction of patients.
Healthcare facilities need to be accessible geographically, provided timely, and use available skills and resources to cater to the medical needs in demand. Accessibility to healthcare facilities enables individuals to have timely diagnosis and treatment services, reducing suffering (World Health Organization, 2018). Patient-centered service is a dimension that describes delivering services that consider the preferences, beliefs, and wants of individuals and the community. The patient-centered approach ensures collaborations between customers and healthcare providers, facilitating positive patients’ outcomes. Equity provision of healthcare promotes cohesion and fairness, improving service delivery. Safe is a dimension describing service delivery that minimizes the risks associated with treatment and harms to patients. Safe service delivery fosters trust among patients while boosting confidence in the medical practitioners to better the services offered.
To be able to compete, Welsh hospital would have to improve the six dimensions of quality. To do these advancements, the hospital needs to conduct a SWOT analysis to ascertain the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the hospital (TQM Fundamentals, Week 3). Identifying these four areas will enable the hospital to limit weaknesses and threats while maximizing strengths and opportunities. The strengths of an organization are those characteristics that give a business a reasonable edge over its competitors. Welsh hospital should capitalize on opportunities available in branching out to new markets or increasing its viable edge against its opponents. These opportunities may include a lack of quality services in different locations, a virtuous reputation, better facilities, and accessibility to improve its competitiveness. The company’s threats should be eliminated to ensure a worthy image and quality service in the company.
On the dimensions mentioned, the hospital needs to improve the six to ensure improvement of quality. Welsh hospital needs to be effective in its operations and delivery of healthcare services. The hospital needs to improve its services by using evidence-based practice approaches to ensure decent patient outcomes (World Health Organization, 2018). Using evidence-based practice improves patients’ outcomes and, thus, enhances service quality, enabling the hospital to be competitive. Welsh hospitals need to improve efficiency by maximizing the available resources to deliver services while avoiding wastage. Reducing wastage of resources avails more resources to be used in caring for patients. Utilizing resources through proper management will enable the hospital to minimize wastage and improve its services, making it competitive and expanding globally (TQM Fundamentals, Week 4). The hospital should look at favorable geographical locations when choosing locations for expansion. Easily accessible sites offer a competitive edge because they will be convenient to individuals. The accessibility of the services should also be timely, meaning that the hospital should offer various services. Timely medical service is an improvement in quality because it provides convenience, and since medical services are time-sensitive, this will bring better reviews from patients visiting the hospital.
A patient-centered approach is essential in providing healthcare services because it enables the hospital to use the patient’s information and preferences to offer treatment for the best outcome. A patient-centered approach allows considering individuals’ beliefs, thus minimizing or eliminating the rising of conflict between patients and healthcare providers (World Health Organization, 2018). Welsh hospital expansion would mean moving into locations with people of various cultural and religious beliefs affecting their care. Adapting to these changes will be essential to providing a patient-centered approach that will make the hospital competitive in most markets they venture into. Expanding to new markets will require the hospital to be diverse in age, gender, ethnicity, and race to enhance cohesion and acceptance in these new markets. Providing equitable services without discrimination will enable the hospital to stand out as an inclusive institution and offer a competitive advantage. Safety in healthcare is essential to promote patients’ well-being (World Health Organization, 2018). Welsh hospitals should improve safety precautions by providing regulations to their staff on safety standards to improve service delivery to the patient. Increasing patient safety enhances the quality of service offered, and this gives the hospital a competitive advantage when expanding.
Type of Quality Dimensions
Quality is essential in providing value to customers and has a competitive advantage against competitors. To develop a continuous competitive advantage, an organization needs to improve the quality of products and services offered to customers (TQM Fundamentals, Week 3). Welsh hospitals should continuously increase the services provided through the improvement of the six dimensions of quality. Getting better quality has various aspects, and a broad approach to enhancing quality is called Total quality improvement. Total quality includes improving the quality of products, services, and costs to ensure a streamlining of the organization’s operations. Welsh hospital should better the organization’s total quality through the improvement of different aspects of the organization. There are other quality types, including expected quality, value-added quality, indifferent quality, and reverse quality.
Welsh hospital’s expected services are medical services. These services’ quality falls under the six dimensions of quality and the type of each quality dimension can be determined (World Health Organization, 2018). Effectiveness is an expected quality because individuals require medical services in Welsh hospitals to be productive in treating ailments. Efficiency is a value-added quality because it reduces the loss of resources and improves the quality of services. Accessibility is a value-added quality because a more accessible service is more valuable (TQM Fundamentals, Week 1). A patient-centered approach is a value-added quality because it increases patient satisfaction, which is vital for attaining the hospital’s objectives and offers a competitive advantage. Equitable service is an expected quality because a hospital should be an inclusive place because it offers an essential service. Safety is an expected quality because medical services should be safe to ensure patients are not harmed and the treatment received ensures their quick recovery without any adverse effects or reduces risks. Enhancing these different quality types increases the hospital’s competitive advantage and gives them an edge when expanding.
Importance of Considering Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
Ethics is an essential aspect of the success of an organization. Ethics dictate employees’ and other staff’s behavior and provide a good perception from customers (Schmidt et al., 2017). Ethics in an organization are defined in the codes of ethics and conduct. Codes of ethics describe its values and expected behavior, and employees’ actions to maintain a healthy working environment. Codes of ethics help in maintaining a professional environment. These codes of ethics and conduct provide direction for professional behavior and consequences when these codes are broken. Welsh hospitals should consider ethics in their operation to increase safety, enhance professionalism and improve customer satisfaction. Medical services require to be safe to ensure a positive outcome for their patients. Maintaining ethics in hospital operations helps enhance safety by maintaining high professionalism and enhancing service delivery through proper resources.
Cooperate social responsibility is an organization’s activities that contribute to attaining societal goals and philanthropic activities (Carroll and Brown, 2018). Corporate social responsibility is an organization’s way of giving back to the community. Welsh hospitals should consider corporate social responsibilities to improve public perception, build a brand, and foster employee morale. Building a brand and an excellent public image promotes the hospital in the market, and this will bring more customers helping in its expansion. Philanthropic activities such as community health campaigns boost employee morale as they use their skills and the hospital’s resources for good. Welsh hospitals should organize voluntary health camps for screening of various diseases in the neighboring community. The hospital should provide employment to members of society and ensure a healthy and safe working environment. The hospital should ensure that they damp their waste at inappropriate disposal points to avoid environmental pollution.
Establishing a Quality Culture
Quality culture is an environment where an organization and team members care about the quality of services offered and make decisions to ensure the meeting of quality demands. There are several ways a company can establish a quality culture-defining rule, including training of employees, clear communication with regulators, and seeking customer feedback (TQM Fundamentals, Week 6). The first step in establishing a quality culture is defining values and principles to run the organization. The hospital should instill these values in its employees through strategic approaches such as recommending employees to treat patients like family members. Training employees is another suitable method of fostering a quality culture. Welsh hospitals should introduce training to its medical staff to reinforce the values that promote quality culture. Training is an effective method to instill intended values because various medical bodies regulate this training (TQM Fundamentals, Week 4). Training improves skills that will foster a quality culture. Communication with regulators is also an essential aspect in maintaining a quality culture in an organization.
Welsh hospitals should implement regulatory frameworks that support high-quality standards which can be audited. The regulatory frameworks can be improved progressively through the auditing process, thus enhancing the quality standards and setting up a quality culture (TQM Fundamentals, Week 6). Seeking customer feedback is essential in ensuring the organization’s quality standards meet customer expectations. Welsh should implement a feedback mechanism through questionnaires or social media sights to seek feedback on service quality. This feedback can be used to improve areas that customers complain about and thus maintain a quality culture.
Importance of Customer Satisfaction
Companies provides quality services to ensure clients receive what they deserve. Customer satisfaction is essential in attaining organizational goals (Kasiri et al., 2017). Welsh hospitals should seek to achieve customer satisfaction through improved services and safe practices. Customer satisfaction encompasses two aspects: internal and external customer satisfaction. Internal customer satisfaction includes the satisfaction of the organization’s staff. To attain internal customer satisfaction, Welsh hospital should consist of strategic plans to compensate the employees fairly, create a suitable working environment, train the employees to increase their skills, and offer professional development. Making the employees comfortable in their working environment is essential to increasing employee performance. Improving employee performance ensures maintaining quality standards in services offered. Increased employee performance increases productivity and can enable the hospital to expand. External customer satisfaction involves meeting external customers, that is, the patient’s needs to their expectations. External customer satisfaction comes from quality services that ensure quick recovery, eliminating risk and harm to the patients (Kasiri et al., 2017). To meet customer satisfaction, the hospital needs to improve on the six quality dimensions and seek customer feedback.
Conclusion
Improvement of quality is an essential aspect of an organization as it brings customer satisfaction to the products and services offered by an organization. Healthcare facilities require high-quality standards in their patient care to ensure better patient outcomes. Improvement of quality incorporates increasing the number of medical practitioners, compensating them well, improving equipment, and streamlining hospital operations. For Welsh hospital to be competitive, it needs to improve the six dimensions of quality: accessibility, effectiveness, efficiency, safety, patient-centered treatment, and equitable services. Welsh hospitals should promote ethical values and social cooperation responsibilities to promote a virtuous image in the community and boost employee morale. Quality culture in an organization allows it to maintain high-quality standards of products. Welsh should introduce a quality culture to be competitive by attracting more customers due to good patient outcomes. Customer satisfaction is the driver of success because satisfied clients come back and provide free marketing through the word of mouth. Welsh should ensure customer satisfaction by getting feedback to remain competitive.
Reference List
Carroll, A. B. and Brown, J. A. (2018) ‘Corporate social responsibility: a review of current concepts, research and issues’, in Weber, J. & Wasleleski, D. (eds.) Corporate social responsibility. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, pp. 39-69.
Kasiri, L. A. et al. (2017) ‘Integration of standardization and customization: Impact on service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 35, pp. 91-97. Web.
Schmidt, B. J. et al. (2017). ‘Becoming inclusive: a code of conduct for inclusion and diversity,’ Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(2), pp. 102-107. Web.
‘TQM Fundamentals’ (no date) [Power Point Presentation].
World Health Organization (2018) Handbook for national quality policy and strategy: a practical approach for developing policy and strategy to improve quality of care. Web.