The Role of Total Quality Management in the National Health Service Essay - 1

The Role of Total Quality Management in the National Health Service - Essay Example The researcher of this essay states that in the last couple of decades, there has been an increasing interest in the application of quality management into healthcare organisations around the globe. It appears that the healthcare system, in general, have largely embraced total quality management. One of this organizations, that are aimed to improve themself is the National Health Service (NHS). It is stated that the drive for total quality management began early in the 1980s as a fall out of the Griffiths Report. Since then, and over the following years, ‘quality’ has become a buzz word in the NHS. This essay intends to look at this developing importance of total quality management in the healthcare sector. And using the NHS as a guide, this article reviews the critical elements of total quality management, the different factors that come to play in promoting these elements and how these can be better put to use to improve the overall quality of service delivery in the N HS. The next section of the essay attempts a detailed explanation of the term 'total quality management', to establish a background understanding of the topic at hand. This is followed by a look at the several elements of TQM, the factors driving these elements and how they inter-play to enhance service delivery and improve competitive advantage. In conclusion, the researcher discusses how total quality management has affected the National Health Service recently and what improvements were reached by it's managers.