Track: Quality Engineering, Control and Management

Abstract

Purpose– Worldwide, Quality Management (QM) in healthcare services has become an important focus. This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework that will be used to improve the existing QM in Oman’s Healthcare.

Design/methodology/approach– In May 2014, Ministry of Health in Oman has published the first edition of its Health Vision: 2050. It was developed through a number of well-planned scientific activities. Few studies have built on this vision in different aspects. This paper has studied this vision and other literatures that have been published in the last Four years to design a framework for Oman’s healthcare QM.

Findings– The proposed conceptual framework consists of four pillars; building a quality and patient safety culture among employees, top management commitments toward quality and patient safety, identifying a monitoring system to track input and output, and involving patients and their families in creating new services and improving the current ones. Each pillar is consisting of different dimensions which are measured by Key Performance Indicators.

Originality/value– To the best of author’s knowledge, no conceptual framework has been developed to improve Oman’s Healthcare QM. This framework assists decision makers to reach performance improvement against a best practice benchmark.

Keywords

Quality Management, Healthcare, Oman and Conceptual Framework.