A QFD-based approach to quality measurement in health care

Abstract

The general problem of process control requires a big committment in terms of technologies and specific capacities about plenty of aspects that must be controlled, according to trial complexity and particularity of the health structure. This demand drove us to plan and define a methodological tool able to be applied to a general process in a health structure. Requirements for this kind of tools are related to the possibility to produce numerical, synthetic, and objective indexes, according to the idea that a numerical index has the intrinsic property to give a synthetic and comparable kind of information, especially when it’s linked to a qualitative definition. Hence, we propose a methodological tool based on QFD (Quality Function Deployment) approach and characterized by a “semi-quantitative” and at the same time objective approach to quality measurement in health care structures. Such an instrument may be applied to several processes of the health care area or, given a “target process”, more times to the same process in distinct moments (for example before and after particular changes on critical aspects), to assess the contribution supplied by this improvements on process performances.