How to Build your Quality Team – Part 2

by | Oct 9, 2017 | Business Process Improvement

In our Part 1 article, we identified the definition of Quality Management, which is the act of overseeing activities and tasks needed to maintain a desired level of excellence. This includes developing a quality policy, creating and implementing quality planning and assurance, as well as implementing quality control and quality improvement.

Quality teams may create sub-teams depending on their projects. To summarize, below are the steps on how to build a Quality Team.

  1. Identify the function/s of the Quality Team. This is typically done by Top Management.
  2. Appoint the head of the Quality Team and its reporting structure.
  3. Prepare a Quality Plan, which includes the team structure, functions, and projects, and have this plan approved by the top management.
  4. Based on the approved Quality Plan,
    1. Build your Quality Team, staring with a head and then add members, as necessary.
    2. Create Sub-Quality Team/s, if needed.
    3. Appoint Sub-Quality Team Members, typically composed of a Quality Team Leader, Champion, Sponsors, and Technical Experts.

As mentioned earlier, what’s important is that there should be a full-time employee (FTE) who will take charge of the quality management functions or head the quality team. The number of FTEs will again vary with the organization’s goals. In the healthcare setting, this team would have to expand in cases when the hospital applies for JCI accreditation.

When the The Medical City decided to go for JCI accreditation in 2006, we grew to about 10 in 2006 and up to 40 in 2014. We also consolidated all of the quality units including quality improvement, infection control, and safety into one division inside TMC: Quality Improvement and Safety Division.

If you’d like to know more about my experience implementing quality and patient safety best practices and standards, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

At MedProjects, we help healthcare organizations deliver better patient care by recommending and implementing best practices on quality and patient safety standards. We can work with your hospital Quality Team to conduct gap analysis and decide on the appropriate best practices and standards to be adopted and implemented. If you’re interested to find out how we can help, again, please leave a comment below or contact us.

 

Written by Ma. Carla G. Naniong, MBAH