alls Church General Hospital Quality Cleaners_case_studies
Case Study
Managing Quality: Falls Church General Hospital
Founded in 1968, the Falls Church General Hospital (FCGH) is a privately owned 6l5patient bed facility in the incorporated township of Falls Church, Virginia. Falls Church is four miles from downtown Washington, D.C., and is surrounded by the counties of
Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria, Virginia, all affluent urban/suburban communities with a highly educated population composed largely of employees of the U.S. government and high-tech engineering firms. Falls Church General Hospital, with 895 employees, provides a broad range of healthcare services, including drug/alcohol abuse wards, emergency rooms, x-ray and laboratory facilities, maternity wards, intensiveand cardiac- care units, and outpatient facilities. In January 1990, the hospital began a series of ads in The Washington Post highlighting its concerned doctors and nurses, its friendly support staff, and its overall philosophy that its employees care about their work and their patients.
The Issue of Assessing Quality Healthcare
Quality healthcare is a goal all hospitals profess, but few have developed comprehensive and scientific means of asking customers to judge the quality of care they receive. A tremendous amount of effort has been devoted to assessing the clinical quality of hospital care; books, journals, and papers on the topic abound. The problem, however, is that past efforts to measure hospital quality have largely ignored the perceptions of customers--the patients, physicians, and payers. Instead of formally considering customer judgments of quality, the healthcare industry has focused almost entirely on internal quality assessments made by the health professionals who operate the system. In effect, a system for improving healthcare has been created that all but ignores the voice of the customer.
The board of FCGH believes that all hospitals need to make the transformation from the current practice of attempting
Managing Quality: Falls Church General Hospital
Founded in 1968, the Falls Church General Hospital (FCGH) is a privately owned 6l5patient bed facility in the incorporated township of Falls Church, Virginia. Falls Church is four miles from downtown Washington, D.C., and is surrounded by the counties of
Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria, Virginia, all affluent urban/suburban communities with a highly educated population composed largely of employees of the U.S. government and high-tech engineering firms. Falls Church General Hospital, with 895 employees, provides a broad range of healthcare services, including drug/alcohol abuse wards, emergency rooms, x-ray and laboratory facilities, maternity wards, intensiveand cardiac- care units, and outpatient facilities. In January 1990, the hospital began a series of ads in The Washington Post highlighting its concerned doctors and nurses, its friendly support staff, and its overall philosophy that its employees care about their work and their patients.
The Issue of Assessing Quality Healthcare
Quality healthcare is a goal all hospitals profess, but few have developed comprehensive and scientific means of asking customers to judge the quality of care they receive. A tremendous amount of effort has been devoted to assessing the clinical quality of hospital care; books, journals, and papers on the topic abound. The problem, however, is that past efforts to measure hospital quality have largely ignored the perceptions of customers--the patients, physicians, and payers. Instead of formally considering customer judgments of quality, the healthcare industry has focused almost entirely on internal quality assessments made by the health professionals who operate the system. In effect, a system for improving healthcare has been created that all but ignores the voice of the customer.
The board of FCGH believes that all hospitals need to make the transformation from the current practice of attempting