Strategic management of quality in health care

The considerable interest in quality management has filtered through to health care organisations. Although well accepted as an operational improvement tool, the role of quality in strategic management and marketing is less clear. Qualitative research was undertaken within one of Australia’s largest private health care providers for the purpose of exploring the role that quality management plays in its operations. Interviews revealed that the organisations major emphasis on continuous quality management had yielded significant strategic results since its inception. Notwithstanding the benefits realised to date, there was a perceived need to continuously evaluate quality management against objective criteria and to better integrate the process with mainstream strategic management activities of the organisation