Quality Assurance in Health Care

A highly developed understanding of the concept of quality is essential for managers and leaders to effectively manage their own health care organizations, handle their partners and stakeholders, and delight their patients. In the face of increasing demands for quality health care, fast changing regulatory environment, the need to relate to a wide range of stakeholders, and a much more dynamic provider-patient relationship, quality health care is not an option but rather an imperative.

This course will highlight the importance of Quality Assurance and establish among providers of health care the importance of safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity among owners, managers and administrators of health care facilities (i.e., hospitals, ambulatory, lying-in, clinics). It presents an overview of these concepts and discusses ways to operationalize them.

It will also provide participants with basic knowledge and skills on producing a coherent and comprehensive manual on Standard Operating Practices (SOPs) that reflect their organization's professional standards, ethics, philosophy and values.

Strategic Management for Hospitals

Other Health Care Management Courses

Quality in Health Care Management Series
    Measuring and Evaluating Quality in the Health Care Industry
    Process Improvement in Health Care
    Lean Six Sigma in Health Care

Operational Efficiency Series
    Finance and Budgeting
    Marketing Health Care
    People Management in Health Care

A successful participant will be able to:
1.    Define quality according to the perspective of the provider, the payor and the consumer of health care goods and services;
2.    Demonstrate an appreciation on the role of quality assurance on health care management;
3.    Exhibit an understanding of the six dimensions of health care quality;
4.    Discuss features of global and local  health standards and discuss the changing focus of quality in health care;
5.    Discuss features of  accrediting agencies in health, both national and international (e.g., PHIC, FDA, DOH, JCI, ISO, Accreditation Canada, etc); and
6.    Enumerate and explain the different steps in creating an SOP manual.

1.    Health care providers: managers, administrators, owners of health care facilities and health professionals
2.    Health care payors: Government representative (PHIC)
3.    Health care consumers: Patients, patient groups and their families

1.    The Different Perspectives on Quality
2.    The Evolution and Current Focus of  Quality in Health Care
3.    Quality Principles
4.    The Quality Cycle
5.    Tenets of Quality Assurance
6.    The Quality Assurance Process
        a.    Planning for quality assurance
        b.    Developing guidelines and setting standards
        c.    Communicating standards and specifications
        d.    Monitoring quality
        e.    Identifying problems and selecting opportunities for improvement
        f.    Defining the problem operationally
        g.    Choosing a team
        h.    Analyzing and studying the problem to identify its root causes
        i.    Developing solutions and actions for improvement
        j.    Implementing and evaluating quality improvement efforts
7.    Organizing a Quality Program

is the Advisor for Health Research and Certificate Courses of the Public Health and Society Programs under the Health Unit of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, where he provides overall leadership and direction for the basic and applied research, outreach, and publications programs of the unit.