Case study

Memorial Hospital

Read the “Memorial Hospital” case study in Chapter 4 of your text. In a three- to four-page paper, respond to the guided response below.

• Discuss ways that a hospital might measure quality. Be sure to explain your reasoning.


• Explain the potential costs and failures of quality for Memorial Hospital and discuss how each can be measured.


• Discuss ideas or techniques from TQM that Janice could use to help Memorial focus on providing quality health care.


• Analyze the methods Memorial could use to assess the quality of health care it is providing.

Your paper should be in paragraph form (avoid the use of bullet points) and supported with the concepts outlined in your text and additional scholarly sources.

Submit your three- to four-page paper (not including the title and reference pages). Your paper must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center and must cite at least three scholarly sources in addition to the textbook.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.

Case Studies

Memorial Hospital

Memorial Hospital is a privately owned 600-bed facility. The hospital provides a broad range of health care services, including completelaboratory and X-ray facilities, an emergency room, an intensive care unit, a cardiac care unit, and a psychiatric ward. Most of these services areprovided by several other hospitals in the metropolitan area. Memorial has purposely avoided getting involved in any specialized fields ofmedicine or obtaining very specialized diagnostic equipment because it was felt that such services would not be cost-effective. The GeneralHospital, located only a few miles from Memorial, is affiliated with the local School of Medicine and offers up-to-date services in thosespecialized areas. Instead of trying to compete with General Hospital to provide special services, Memorial Hospital has concentrated on offeringhigh-quality general health care at an affordable price. Compared with the much larger General Hospital, Memorial stresses close personalattention to each patient from a nursing staff that cares about its work. In fact, the hospital has begun to place ads in newspapers and ontelevision, stressing its patient-oriented care.

However, the hospital's administrator, Janice Fry, is concerned about whether the hospital can really deliver on its promises, and worries thatfailure to provide the level of health care patients expect could drive patients away. Janice met recently with the hospital's managerial personnelto discuss her concerns. The meeting raised some questions about how the hospital's quality of health care could be assured. Jessica Tu,director of nursing, raised the question, "How do we measure the quality of health care? Do we give patients a questionnaire when they leave,asking if they were happy here? That does not seem to answer the question because we could make a patient happy, but give them lousyhealth care." Several other questions were asked concerning the hospital's efforts to keep costs down. Some people were concerned that anemphasis on costs would be detrimental to quality. They argued that when a person's life is at stake, costs should not be of concern.

After the meeting, Janice began thinking about these questions. She remembered reading recently that some companies were using total qualitymanagement (TQM) to improve their quality. She liked the idea—if it could be used in a hospital.

1. Discuss some ways that a hospital might measure quality.


2. What are the potential costs of quality for Memorial Hospital? How could the value of a human life be included?


3. Are there any ideas or techniques from TQM that Janice could use to help Memorial focus on providing quality health care?


4. What measures could Memorial use to assess the quality of health care it is providing?