Quality management is a complex process, especially in healthcare. Managers in today's environment need more than just an understanding of the historical concepts of quality. They need to understand how to achieve quality within the structure and relationships of the complex system of a healthcare organization.

In Applying Quality Management in Healthcare: A Systems Approach, Third Edition, Diane Kelly, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has enhanced the content to promote an understanding of systems thinking in health services organizations. While still providing readers with the foundational concepts of quality management, she instructs readers on the system implications of understanding stakeholders and the role of policy, establishing goals in complex systems, improving and managing process change, performance measurement, and teamwork. Readers learn how to think critically using new frameworks, approaches, and tools and are given real-life examples and case studies to practice these skills.

This edition features new and enhanced material, including:

• Alternative assumptions to traditional quality management tools and techniques
• An expanded Practice Lab with which readers can exercise newly learned quality techniques
• A guide to using the CMS and Joint Commission quality indicators to improve systems of care
• A glossary of terms
• Additional case studies and exercises designed to individualize applications in the reader's own practice setting

About the Author

Diane L. Kelly, DrPH, MBA, RN, teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health, Public Health Leadership Program, and Duke University School of Nursing. Dr. Kelly is a former member of the editorial advisory board for The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety and the national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program Board of Examiners.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Arnold Kaluzny
• Foreword by Penny K. Jensen
• Preface
• Section I: Quality Management: A Systems Approach
  • Chapter 1: Fundamentals of Quality Management
  • Chapter 2: A Systems Perspective of Quality Management: Characteristics of Complex Systems
  • Chapter 3: Understanding System Behavior: Systemic Structure
  • Chapter 4: Visualizing System Relationships: Models for Health Services Managers

• Section II: Achieving Quality Results in Complex Systems
  • Chapter 5: Establishing System Direction
  • Chapter 6: Establishing Improvement Goals in Complex Systems
  • Chapter 7: Understanding Customer and Stakeholder Requirements
  • Chapter 8: Understanding the Role of Policy in Promoting System Change
  • Chapter 9: Improving Processes and Implementing Improvements
  • Chapter 10: Measuring Process and System Performance
  • Chapter 11: Fostering Teamwork: Below-the-Waterline Considerations

• Section III: Practice Lab

  • Exercise 1: Reflective Journal
  • Exercise 2: The Manager's Role
  • Exercise 3: Dynamic Complexity
  • Exercise 4: Mental Models
  • Exercise 5: System Relationships
  • Exercise 6: Systems Error Case Study and Analysis
  • Exercise 7: Customer Requirements
  • Exercise 8: Improvement Case Study
  • Exercise 9: Team Guidelines
  • Exercise 10: Generational Differences
  • Exercise 11: Organizational Self-Assessment
  • Exercise 12: Improving a Performance Gap in My Organization
  • Exercise 13: Improving a Performance Gap: A Case Study

• Glossary of Terms
• References
• Index
• About the Authors