Quality and technology-based management initiatives within a hospital environment: benchmarking case study

As a continued study of operations management, the concept of quality and benchmarking strategies and how they are managed are critical success factors for healthcare providers. A review of literature and the present case study of Washington Hospital, these critical success factors are important in order to help service quality meets or exceed patient expectation. Through the case study, strategic leveraging of operational effectiveness, quality metrics, innovative uses of technologies, especially automatic identification, quality service becomes a way to gain competitive advantage through continuous improvement and exceeding patients' expectation. The variables that were described in the case study typically had significant impacts on service delivery efficiencies, patient satisfaction, and the overall competitive advantage of a hospital. The approaches to managing quality through a variety of concepts such as accreditation, technology, continuous improvement, and benchmarking ultimately provided management at Washington to obtain its performance goals.