Second, greater education about the values and benefit of this approach to managing projects needs to be completed (Brady, Maylor, 2010). Third, the inertia and lack of motivation to change needs to be quantified and shown to managers to see how their lack of commitment and urgency are hurting their businesses. All of these factors center on the value of time and its precious nature as a resource (Brady, Maylor, 2010). References

Brady, T., & Maylor, H.. (2010). The improvement paradox in project contexts: A clue to the way forward? International Journal of Project Management, 28(8), 787.

Casamatta, C., & Guembel, a.. (2010). Managerial Legacies, Entrenchment, and Strategic Inertia. The Journal of Finance, 65(6), 2403.

Jacobs, Robert, & Chase, Richard. (2010). Operations and Supply Chain Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw Hill Higher Education. 13th Edition.

What is the difference between statistical process control (SPC) and statistical quality control (SQC)?

The goal of statistical process control (SPC) includes the measuring, monitoring and improving a given series of processes using statistical tools and techniques (Gruska, Kymal, 2006). Statistical process control is prevalent in oil and gas, chemicals and pharmaceutical industries. SPC relies on statistical process techniques to understand variation in quality and output based on production strategies and programs

(Jacobs, Chase, 2010). Statistical quality control (SQC) is the series of frameworks, techniques and tools used for effectively measuring and improving the quality level of product over time (Mahmoud, Henderson, Epprecht, Woodall, 2010). Their use and adoption by industry is dependent on a wide range of factors including the level of acceptance in a given corporate culture for quantitative measures of performance (Gruska, Kymal, 2006). SPC is also being applied to services-related business models as well, looking to find variation in service process performance. The use of secondary indexes for quantifying each aspect of service processes has also grown as SPC has gained momentum over time, with the most prevalent being SERVQUAL (Mahmoud, Henderson, Epprecht, Woodall, 2010). The concept of SERVQUAL is to integrate in perceptions of service to the quality levels being attained so companies have an indication of what to improve upon over time (Gruska, Kymal, 2006).

References

Greg Gruska, & Chad Kymal. (2006). Use SPC for Everyday Work Processes. Quality Progress, 39(6), 25-32.

Jacobs, Robert, & Chase, Richard. (2010). Operations and Supply Chain Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw Hill Higher Education. 13th Edition.

Mahmoud, M., Henderson, G., Epprecht, E., & Woodall, W.. (2010). Estimating the Standard Deviation in Quality-Control Applications. Journal of Quality Technology, 42(4), 348-357.

Identify and describe the American Hospital Association's four classifications of hospitals?

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has the categories of General, Special, Psychiatric and Rehabilitation and Chronic Disease as the four classifications for hospitals (Roszak, 2004). The approach each takes to attaining process efficiencies varies by the patient flows in each one, as there are different treatment paths and approaches in each (Jacobs, Chase, 2010). The first is the General hospital category with incudes support for patient services, diagnostic, therapeutic and clinical laboratory services. A Special hospital class is the second set and this is used for management of diagnostic and treatment services for surgical and nonsurgical treatments (Lee, Alexander, Wang, Margolin, Combes, 2008). This type of hospital also often has psychological and social work programs in place as part of their patient workflow approach (Roszak, 2004). The third type of AHA hospital concentrates on Rehabilitation and Chronic Disease, and the mission of these hospitals is to provide support and services for adjustive and restorative treatment plans. These hospitals also have x-ray services, clinical laboratory service, and offer physical therapy service. The last of the four types of hospitals is the psychiatric. Ads the name suggests this hospital centers on treatment programs for psychiatric-related illnesses. This hospital commonly offers clinical lab services, support from social work service for psychiatric and psychological treatment and is affiliated with each of the other types of AHA hospitals to support patients' treatment plans.

References

Jacobs, Robert, & Chase, Richard. (2010). Operations and Supply Chain Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw Hill Higher Education. 13th Edition.

Lee, S., Alexander, J., Wang, V., Margolin, F., & Combes, J.. (2008). An Empirical Taxonomy of Hospital Governing Board Roles. Health Services Research, 43(4), 1223-1243.

Dennis J. Roszak. (2004, November). AHA Hospital Statistics, 2005 Edition. Hospitals & Health Networks, 78(11), 86.

Identify the name given to the flow of work through a hospital? Describe the characteristics of this flow of work.

The flow of work through a hospital is typically referenced as the patient flow or the efficiency patient flow when analyzed in the context of...

The components of the patient workflow include admission and bed request, accurate patient placemen, patient care management, treatment plan and assessment, coordinated discharge, bed turnover and performance reporting (Day, Dean, Garfinkel, Thompson, 2010). The concepts of Six Sigma and lean production techniques are used for making these processes more cost-effective over time (Jacobs, Chase, 2010). Business process Management (BPM) and Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) techniques are also used extensively for managing each step in the process, ensuring that the patient's status is being tracked and reported throughout the entire stay. In addition to these aspects of lean process management on the patient workflow process there is an increasing use of analytics as well for real-time updates of patient status (Day, Dean, Garfinkel, Thompson, 2010). These process steps are also often applied to the emergency room scenarios where inbound patients must be quickly admitted and given immediate attention from physicians in addition to having a room assigned immediately in the case of a lengthy recover plan (Willoughby, Chan, Strenger, 2010).
References

Day, R., Dean, M., Garfinkel, R., & Thompson, S.. (2010). Improving patient flow in a hospital through dynamic allocation of cardiac diagnostic testing time slots. Decision Support Systems, 49(4), 463.

Jacobs, Robert, & Chase, Richard. (2010). Operations and Supply Chain Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw Hill Higher Education. 13th Edition.

Keith a. Willoughby, Benjamin T.B. Chan, & Marlene Strenger. (2010). Achieving wait time reduction in the emergency department. Leadership in Health Services, 23(4), 304-319.

Describe the three main services provided by a hospital staff?

The three main services within a hospital are all integrated within a common compliance and quality management strategy that is pervasive across all functions and processes in a treatment facility (Charmel, 2010). The three main services are operations and treatment, early discharge schemes, and rehabilitation (Jacobs, Chase, 2010). The quality management each of these areas is defined through the use of Six Sigma methodologies, the use of Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) and the development of real-time analytics to measure overall quality levels continually (Charmel, 2010). Studies have also shown that there is a correlation of nurse and staff attitude to the level of service quality delivered, specifically based on the SERVQUAL measure of performance (Leggat, Bartram, Casimir, Stanton, 2010). This is a common metric used throughout service-based industries to measure satisfaction and correlate it back to the levels of quality delivered by service professionals. The management of the patient workflows to specific quality levels is often managed through balanced scorecards and metrics of performance based on Six Sigma concepts and methodologies (Jacobs, Chase, 2010). The enterprise compliance and quality management aspects of these three services are then included in any reporting of performance and measures of productivity improvements over time.

References

Charmel, P.. (2010). Defining and Evaluating Excellence in Patient-Centered Care. Frontiers of Health Services Management, 26(4), 27-34.

Jacobs, Robert, & Chase, Richard. (2010). Operations and Supply Chain Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: McGraw Hill Higher Education. 13th Edition.

Leggat, S., Bartram, T., Casimir, G., & Stanton, P.. (2010). Nurse perceptions of the quality of patient care: Confirming the importance of empowerment and job satisfaction. Health Care Management Review, 35(4), 355.

Identify and describe the principal element of the overall layout of a hospital?

The principle layout of a hospital is the workflow for patient treatment, often called the patient workflow (Butler, Karwan, Sweigart, Reeves, 1992). Using constraint-based modeling to minimize the number of interruptions to service, the patient-based workflows are often the foundation for defining how each department in a hospital is located to another. The sequencing of hospital departments to support the most common workflows and patient treatment scenarios is an evolving best practice that is being accentuated by WiFi-enabled treatment equipment and patient tracking systems (Hanne, Melo, Nickel, 2009). The intention of creating an integrated hospital system is also to create the supporting infrastructure of a hospital's workflows. In this way, information technologies are used for accentuating and streamlining the patient workflows so that form a process-related standpoint they can continually be improved and augmented based on changes on patient needs (Jacobs, Chase, 2010). The ability to create an agile platform for hospitals to support patient workflows that change over time is essential to attain high levels of process and profitability-based efficiencies (Hanne, Melo, Nickel, 2009). The use of Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM) and other initiatives and platforms for continually increasing the efficiency of these process workflows is the direction of best practices in this…