Continuous Improvement for Cure MD: Strategy & Implementation Report

This report discusses the rationale and implementation of continuous improvement principles within Cure MD, a medium-sized healthcare company. The report highlights the benefits of continuous improvement, drawing from the philosophy of Kaizen and examples of successful implementations in various industries. It contrasts continuous improvement with other quality management practices, emphasizing its adaptability and focus on proactive innovation rather than reactive error correction. The report suggests that Cure MD, operating in a competitive environment with a web-based application, can leverage continuous improvement to optimize patient experience, adapt to technological changes, and maintain a competitive edge. Strategic elements, such as improving output quality and ensuring flexibility, are discussed, along with the importance of collaborative environments, employee participation, and regular workshops for staying current with medical advancements. The report concludes that continuous improvement is an appropriate tool for Cure MD to align efforts towards competitive advantage and enhanced user experience. Desklib provides similar assignments and study tools for students.

RATIONALE

The quality management principle of continuous improvement has a rich history of success,
providing a plethora of opportunities for innovation, continuous refinement and a platform for
dynamic change in accordance with the rapid changes at different levels, be it in the company’s
organizational culture or in the technological evolution. The success of this principle in
providing an exceptional competitive edge lies in examples of the Ford motor company, the
Great Western Bank, Herman Miller's successful products, and even in a large-scale level of
Gujarat Government and in widely different disciplines like Psychotherapy. This ensures its
success and adaptability in any discipline, environment, a scale of the firm or at different time
spans.
The roots of this professional practice can be found in the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, which
is a popular way to mindfully improve processes and products on a regular basis, forming it as a
habit. The principle has ingrained the ability to reduce the waste and chances of failures as these
are directly influenced by continuous improvement. This is due to the minimum lag between the
ideation for change and its implementation. This allows responding to changes and/or failures in
a very efficient manner.
One of the significant facets of its benefits is the high participation of the employees. People at
all levels of the hierarchy participate in the innovation process. This comprehensive participation
of the workforce has many advantages. This includes higher job satisfaction and reinforcement
of worker's motivation, sense of ownership to their work and exemplary teamwork. Also, it
reduces the investment required for research and consultancies in ideation due to effective use of
talents of individual employees and allows small cost-effective changes as opposed to
breakthroughs resulting from Research and Development. It inculcates harmony in the workplace

by reducing the workload. This is by the easier implementation of giant leaps of changes via
daily changes while adapting to internal or external changes.
The unmatched benefits of continuous improvement include self-reflection which directs
elimination of problems and failures in a systematic manner and a flourishing work culture.
This principle has an edge over its other contemporary or alternative practices. The inefficiencies
of quality circles and practice of tracking mistakes are countered by continuous improvement.
Though these alternative practices provide a quality and specifications check for errors and
failures, they do not provide possibilities for innovative changes for survival and success in the
harsh competitive environment. Also, these principles are limited in their application to certain
industries only where accuracy is an important factor and the risks are high. The continuous
improvement principle is widely accepted and easily applicable to various environments,
industries and is practised in a cross-organizational way. In the alternative practices, departments
are segregated for the quality checks or risk management. This hinders complete utilization of
talents and experiences of all the employees.
The features of this principle include collaborative workspaces, regularity, exposure of
employees to technological changes and current trends, programs which are tailored according to
situational factors and company's unique strength, weaknesses and organizational culture. Plus, it
provides a tool to assess their performance by setting benchmarks via inter-firm comparisons. Its
methodology includes better diagnosis of failures and risks.
Many of these features are absent from quality checks, control, analysis and risk management as
they are more of problem-focused nature. Also, they are responsive to the drawbacks rather than
being preventive.

The company Cure MD, being in a highly competitive environment, requires constantly altering
and adaptive measures for providing viable solutions to changing needs of its customers and the
general medical market. The optimization of patient experience can efficiently be gained through
continuous improvement. The shifts in user interactions with technology leaps are countered by
this principle. The customizable nature of its products, with their intelligent services of
scheduling, sorting, efficient cash flows and reporting can be up to date by embedding this
principle in management. Its unique user-centred design and processes in sync with the
population health diagnosis and preventive measures used by hospitals are results of iterative
measures taken.
It is wholly web- based which makes the need to manage in accordance with the ever-changing
information technology, development and user needs, mandatory.
The principle of continuous improvement is appropriate for the success of this medium-sized
company to harness its potential fully. Other than its tactical elements of this principle, the
strategic elements can be used for the assurance of its success in long run. These elements
include deciding how to improve the quality of the output delivery to the consumer and setting
flexibility factors for safety and difference in situations and customer needs. The changes would
be introduced in the applications and services in a discrete step fashion, ensuring no discomfort
or unpleasant experiences to the consumer. With this process, the customer feedback can be
analyzed in terms of organizational goals. This helps in providing services at par with consumer
experiences so that the consumers do not consider other optional applications in the market to
switch to.

Keeping in line with the current trends and ahead of the competitors would be possible by this
principle’s features. The collaborative environment ensures enumeration of all the possible
drawbacks and failures, active exchange of ideas from all levels of experiences and talents. The
activity of newsletters and workshops would help the employees to get in touch with the recent
developments in medical research, equipment, conditions and breakthroughs. The collection of
user experiences and analyzing them with independent assessment helps to widen the scope of
learning.
The creative ideas can emerge with the collaboration of specialists and non- specialists since
only then the ideation for products and process can be on a system level, considering every
factor.
This would provide an open platform for lateral thinking and brainstorming. Also, most
importantly, the participation of every individual helps to tackle problems and failures at each
level and sub-level of the organization. This also helps in reorganizing the hierarchies for the
betterment of company's progress.
This principle would be an appropriate tool to continually align small efforts in the direction of
company’s competitive monopoly and the overall better user experience.