HITEC UNIVERSITY
Heavy Industries Taxila Education City University, Taxila Cantt-Pakistan
Department of Electrical Engineering
HS-403 Management and Entrepreneurship
Complex Engineering Problem
The Culture of Quality at Arnold Palmer Hospital
Founded in 1989, Arnold Palmer Hospital is one of the largest hospitals for women
and children in the U.S., with 431 beds in two facilities totaling 676,000 square feet. Located
in downtown Orlando, Florida, and named after its famed golf benefactor, the hospital, with
more than 2,000 employees, serves an 18-county area in central Florida and is the only Level
1 trauma center for children in that region. Arnold Palmer Hospital provides a broad range of
medical services including neonatal and pediatric intensive care, pediatric oncology and
cardiology, care for high-risk pregnancies, and maternal intensive care.
The Issue of Assessing Quality Health Care
Quality health care is a goal all hospitals profess, but Arnold Palmer Hospital has
actually developed comprehensive and scientific means of asking customers to judge the
quality of care they receive. Participating in a national benchmark comparison against other
hospitals, Arnold Palmer Hospital consistently scores in the top 10% in overall patient
satisfaction. Executive Director Kathy Swanson states, “Hospitals in this area will be
distinguished largely on the basis of their customer satisfaction. We must have accurate
information about how our patients and their families judge the quality of our care, so I
follow the questionnaire results daily. The in-depth survey helps me and others on my team
to gain quick knowledge from patient feedback.” Arnold Palmer Hospital employees are
empowered to provide gifts in value up to $200 to patients who find reason to complain
about any hospital service such as food, courtesy, responsiveness, or cleanliness.
Swanson doesn’t focus just on the customer surveys, which are mailed to patients one
week after discharge, but also on a variety of internal measures. These measures usually start
at the grassroots level, where the staff sees a problem and develops ways to track
performance. The hospital’s longstanding philosophy supports the concept that each patient
is important and respected as a person. That patient has the right to comprehensive,
compassionate family-centered health care provided by a knowledgeable physician-directed
team.
Some of the measures Swanson carefully monitors for continuous improvement are
morbidity, infection rates, readmission rates, costs per case, and length of stays. The tools
she uses daily include Pareto charts, flowcharts, and process charts, in addition to
benchmarking against hospitals both nationally and in the southeast region.
The result of all of these efforts has been a quality culture as manifested in Arnold
Palmer’s high ranking in patient satisfaction and one of the highest survival rates of critically
ill babies.
Questions
1. Why is it important for Arnold Palmer Hospital to get a patient’s assessment of health
care quality? Does the patient have the expertise to judge the health care she receives?
2. How would you build a culture of quality in an organization such as Arnold Palmer
Hospital? Your answer should implement and integrate following steps;
i. Tie quality to the organization’s core values
ii. Distribute a written code of ethics and proper conduct
iii. Create a transparent and open environment for reporting problems
iv. Ensure employees understand the true cost of failing to implement a quality
culture
v. Make it your personal priority
3. Explore how Arnold Palmer Hospital practice “Deming’s 14 Points for Implementing
Quality Improvement” in its drive for quality and continuous improvement?
4. Develop a fish-bone diagram illustrating the quality variables for a patient who just gave
birth at Arnold Palmer Hospital (or any other hospital).
Use the “four M s” or create your own organizing scheme. Include at least 12 causes.
