Journal Article

Self-assessment of all the health centres of a public health service through the European Model of total quality management

Letona, J, González, R M, Inclán, G, Sánchez, E, Martínez-Conde, A E, Hernández, L, Arcelay, A, Bacigalupe, M

1999

Overview

The Basque Country Public Health Service has moved in the last years from considering quality as an attribute of patient care to thinking that all management can be subject to improvement. Consequently, its general management team has promoted and supported a self-assessment experience of all their centres by means of the European Quality Model. This strategy has been facilitated by the Basque Country Government, which has strongly encouraged total quality management in companies, and has created the Basque Foundation for Quality Promotion, a key institution in this whole process. A total of 26 centres of the Public Health Service concluded a self-assessment process. As the main result of this, different improvement areas were detected, and various necessary actions were implemented in the centres assessed. Advantages, troubles and future work lines to extend and improve the use of the EFQM model in the health sector are discussed.

• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subject: Basque people / Case studies / Directors / Education / Evaluation / Health care / Health facilities / Health promotion / Health services / Health Status Indicators / Hospitals / Humans / Management / Management Audit / Models, Organizational / Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care) / Patients / Primary care / Program Evaluation / Public health / Public Health Administration - economics / Public Health Administration - standards / Public Health Administration - statistics & numerical data / Quality / Quality management / Quality of care / Self evaluation / Self-Assessment / Spain - epidemiology / Surveys and Questionnaires / Total quality / Total Quality Management - organization & administration