Track: Quality Control and Management

Abstract

Kuwait is one of the fastest growing countries in terms of population. The country recently is facing a major capacity challenge with respect to many aspects including education, employment and health care. The demand for health care service increases rapidly in Kuwait. With a few number of governmental hospitals, other health care suppliers such as private hospitals and outside health care providers are needed to overcome the limited capacity. Currently the government depends heavily on the private hospitals as a major internal health care supplier to satisfy the high demand. However due to the relatively new involvement and few experience of the private local health sector,  a serious effort to maintain service quality of health care is highly needed. This research presents a framework to improve quality of the local health care service providers in terms of both the design and operational sides. In the design side, the framework includes evaluation measures for the mission and objectives, international affiliation, administration and leadership, medical specialties, admission and registration, testing and evaluation, physicians, support staff, infrastructure, financial status, systems of filing and records, and hospital environment. While in the operational side, the framework includes measures for the productivity, organizational structure, effectivity, efficiency, and grow and continuous improvement. A score system is introduced to classify the providers in terms of quality.