Impact of Critical Total Quality Management Practices on Hospitals' Performance in the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Total Quality Management (TQM) offers a method for solving quality and patient safety problems of healthcare and bringing significant improvement to hospital performance. However, only few studies have been conducted in the area in developing countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia. This research is carried out in an attempt to address this gap, exploring the impact of applying TQM practices on hospital performance in the Saudi Ministry of Health hospitals. The study has included four hospitals in Tabuk Region, namely: King Khaled Hospital, King Fahad Hospital, Maternity and Children Hospital and Hagel General Hospital. The four hospitals are selected for this study because they are either accredited by the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) or currently involved in the accreditation process. The CBAHI was established in 2006 to help improve health services in both public and private hospitals through the accreditation process. The data collection was administered by the researcher where 400 questionnaires were distributed using a convenient sampling technique in order to access the required data. The response rate was 67.25 % of the total questionnaires distributed. TQM constructs employed in the study were consecutively as follows: Leadership, Employee Management, Information Analysis, Training, Customer Focus, Continuous Improvement, Process Management and Supplier management, Many hospitals worldwide have adopted TQM to improve hospital performance in terms of increased economic efficiency, improved clinical outcomes, improved customer satisfaction, and increased market acceptance. Therefore, this study has identified the relationship between the implementations of the independent variables (TQM) practices and the dependant variable (Hospital Performance) in the Saudi hospitals. The findings of the research have revealed that there is a significant positive correlation between the eight practices of Total Quality Management and hospital performance with a correlation coefficient ‘r’ value of 0.9 (p-value 0.0001). This means that any improvement in TQM practices in the Saudi hospitals will lead to increase in their performance. The findings also show that physicians and nurses have significantly lower perception of quality. This means that Saudi hospitals are facing difficulties in engaging the clinical staff in their quality initiative. Finally, our study reveals that accredited hospitals have applied TQM practices more significantly than unaccredited hospitals. In conclusion, hospitals can provide safe and high quality care for people who trust doctors and nurses with their lives and the lives of their families. However, this can only be achieved through effective implementation of TQM practices and organization-wide commitment and collaboration to improve the processes and systems of healthcare.