Quality Advocates

Service quality is referred to a valuation of how good a delivered service meets the customer’s expectation. Upper management

Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs), work in partnership with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to advocate for safe, efficient, and quality healthcare for Americans. Working at the community level, QIOs collaborate with providers and interact with beneficiaries to improve patient outcomes. Additionally, QIOs support new models of care and promote healthcare goals endorsed by the National Quality Strategy, and CMS Quality Strategy. CMS has strategically placed QIOs in several regions nationwide, and Mississippi is served by Information and Quality Healthcare (IQH). IQH founded in 1971 as a non-profit organization has strived to improve the quality of care received in Mississippi. IQH participates in a tobacco cessation helpline, behavioral health services, and diabetes education for Medicare beneficiaries.

Service quality - refers to difference between the level of service that is expected from consumers and the perception of the service that is actually received. (Caruana,

Performance measures are important for a quality improvement plan because the data collected through performance measures will help the team determine if the correct process is being implemented and if the desired results are being achieved through the QI plan. Performance measures can help the quality improvement team analyze data on the ongoing success or deterioration of a work group, QI program, or efforts of an organization by comparing performance measure data. Performance measure data can help gather data on what actually outcome of the quality improvement initiative versus what was initially predicted to happen. Quality improvement performance measures allow the team to use quantitative measures that can measure critical information

C. Quality: The degree to which a product or service meets customer requirements and expectations.

As individuals we all have our own perspective on what would amount to quality. With regards to the general public we are a nation of extreme diversity, with individuals and families from a wide-range of nations, cultures, personal beliefs and superstitions. Therefore, quality may and will have contrasting opinions, or values, an example could be as follows: Each of us having a fine meal at a restaurant may or would have contrasting opinion on the setting, service, and the overall quality of the food.

Quality of care for patients can be overwhelming. Therefore, systems should be put into place to create the most comfortable setting for high-quality care for both staff and patients. There are many factors that are involved in the process, beginning with understanding how the company operates. As a quality officer you should be knowledgeable in many areas. A manager has many responsibilities overseeing day to day staff issues to physician problems, to patient complaints. The manager has to wear many hats throughout the day.

Quality: the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something

Improving the management and prevention of diabetes is at the forefront of public quality initiatives improvements. Government agencies such as, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), work together to fund research studies to improve disease management and prevention initiatives across the nation. The most effective initiatives are those that center on the health care team, and the interactions between the team and patient (Shojania et al., 2006). Team based initiatives that focus on education and patient involvement highlight the correlation between increased health literacy and improved disease management and prevention.

Quality is a measurement of how well we adhere to our documented processes, which in turn reflects on how we are delivering the On Your Side Promise to our members.

Wicks and Roethlein (2009) define quality as the “maximum customer satisfaction and customer retention that leads to customer loyalty to the health care organisation”. This means that when customers are happy with the care they receive they will be confident in the service that the health care organisation is given.

Quality is the features and characteristics of products (goods) and services that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Quality expectation can go a long way within a business as the consumers influences on a business it what drives the business, certain quality standard is to be uphold.

Quality: - Quality means fitness of the product or services to use by the Customer. Quality means competitive cost, Productivity, timely delivery of the services or products and total customer Satisfaction in terms of the product and services and Total services paid by customer to the company.

Traditionally, Service quality can be portrayed as the result from client comparison between their assumptions about the service they will use and their insight about the service company. That implies that if the insight recognitions would be higher than the desired the service will be considered as fabulous, if the desires rise to the insight observations the service is viewed as great and if the desires are not met the service will be viewed as awful. For a service to be considered as good the organisation is required for making customers satisfied and service quality should be associated with customer perceptions and expectations. (Carlsson, 2010)

Deming, Juran, and Crosby all define quality in different ways. Deming defines quality as a continuous improvement and the ultimate goal is zero defects; however, he realizes an error free product may not be economically feasible or practical (Kerzner, 2009, p. 880). Deming also states a product or service is defined by the customer and quality is a relative term and will change based on the customer’s needs (Suarez, 1992, p.3)