TQM Concepts and Tools for Hospitals During Pandemic: A Report

This report addresses the application of Total Quality Management (TQM) in hospitals, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report begins by highlighting the challenges hospitals face, including resource over-utilization, inefficient patient flow, and overcrowding, leading to poor health services. It then proposes various TQM concepts and tools to improve hospital performance. These include implementing operational management strategies, such as improving emergency care units, training staff, and implementing standards to mitigate overcrowding. The report also emphasizes the importance of Total Quality Management (TQM) for developing strategies, products, and services. The report further discusses the relevance of Just-in-Time (JIT) for cost reduction and ensuring adequate satisfaction, and the need for continuous improvement, employee empowerment, and the use of tools like checklists and flowcharts. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of applying TQM in the organization and providing training to employees.

Running head: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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There can be over-utilization of resources; improvement gets hampered in many emergency
departments of hospitals at a sudden point of time along with the inefficient flow of patient and
overcrowding. Hence, it is essential to improve the emergency care unit of the hospital among
the recommendations of Operation management. Training in operations management should be
upgraded by professional associations and authorized organizations. Medicare centres and
services should implement standards to eliminate overcrowding and ambulance diversions.
Improve the quality and safety of care. In addition, there can be more need of ICU unit in this
situation which need to mitigate demand for it, to make it available for those who are at high
risk.
On the other way, Total Quality Management can be relevant to hospitals aiming at
developing and improving strategies, products and services for the overall improvement in the
performance of the hospitals through various concepts and tools (Balasubramanian, 2016).
Just in Time (JIT) can be helpful in healthcare by reducing the cost of medicines and
equipment which are too essential in this situation so that the patient can get adequate
satisfaction without any sacrifice in the quality (Rogers et al., 2017). All the medical staff
members should ensure that sufficient medical equipment is available on time such as
ventilators, intravenous pumps and pharmaceuticals to treat the random patients at an urgency
basis.
Continuous improvement- This can ensure to make the administrative team members and
clinicians free from other works and devotion, making them focus on the severe cases in this
pandemic (Ajmal et al., 2020). There should be continuous improvement in the health system
and should be expanded beyond their capacity to treat the patients with COVID-19.

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Employee empowerment- Employee ability, proficiency and motivation on which the
hospital achievement depends. In-hospital management, corporation between the team members,
cross-function team-work, can prove to be an effective solution to cope-up with the rising cases
of COVID-19 all across the countries (Clarke et al., 2017). They should work following the
principle of unity and empowerment to manage their duties and responsibility to serve their
patients. There is a large number of casualty protocols for this disastrous event, i.e., COVID-19
in many hospitals which makes it essential for having equal mobilization of medical staff,
including resources during the undergoing situation.
Some of the tools of improving the quality in this pandemic situation will help the
hospitals that are struggling with the issues of rendering an inadequate health service towards the
patients and to save the economy.
Checklists- Checklist can be useful in hospitals during this time of pandemic to make an
evaluation and to see how much they have prepared for acknowledging to a worldwide outbreak
of COVID-19. It must be ensured that there is an adaption of this checklist in each hospital to
fulfil their individual needs and conditions (Hick et al., 2020). For instance, it can include
whether the estimation of numbers of equipment and materials related to patient care are
completed or are in progress. In addition, it can consist of whether equipment related to personal
protection such as facemasks, gloves, including hand hygiene products, is supplied or not.
Flow chart- Direction of flow is shown by the picture, text coupled with line symbols etc.
permit modelling of processes, decision points etc. a simple understanding of a process is
developed by those involved (Shukla, Keast & Ceglarek, 2017). The chart will be useful in
evaluating and treating the COVID patients who are suspected in different areas and regions

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against non-COVID patients. In addition, it can help the hospitals by assisting them having
decisions on the admission of the suspected COVID patients, providing ventilator support and
their discharge matters.
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that operation management in
healthcare will reduce the costs and improve the schedules of urgent treatment to maintain the
quality and safety. For ensuring the success of TQM in healthcare during an outbreak of
‘COVID-19’ pandemic situation, it must be assured that they are applied in the organization, and
any lack of a link between the employees and management, needs to be eliminated. There should
be training given to employees regarding offering quality services. Evaluation of daily activities
and plans needs to be observed to see how much they have prepared for acknowledging to a
worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, focusing on severe cases.

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References
Ajmal, M. M., Tuomi, V., Helo, P. T., & Sandhu, M. A. (2020). TQM practices in public sector:
case of Finnish healthcare organizations. In Hospital Management and Emergency
Medicine: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice (pp. 536-549). IGI Global.
Balasubramanian, M. (2016). Total quality management [TQM] in the healthcare industry–
challenges, barriers and implementation developing a framework for TQM
implementation in a healthcare setup. Science Journal of Public Health, 4(4), 271-278.
Clarke, J. L., Bourn, S., Skoufalos, A., Beck, E. H., & Castillo, D. J. (2017). An innovative
approach to health care delivery for patients with chronic conditions. Population health
management, 20(1), 23-30.
Hick, J. L., Hanfling, D., Wynia, M. K., & Pavia, A. T. (2020). Duty to plan: health care, crisis
standards of care, and novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. NAM Perspectives.
Rogers, C., Cooper, S., Renshaw, S., Schnepp, J., Renguette, C., & Seig, M. T. (2017, October).
Developing a Just-in-Time Adaptive Mobile Platform for Family Medicine Education:
Experiential Lessons Learned. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in
Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 948-954). Association
for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Shukla, N., Keast, J. E., & Ceglarek, D. (2017). Role activity diagram-based discrete event
simulation model for healthcare service delivery processes. International Journal of
Systems Science: Operations & Logistics, 4(1), 68-83.

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