Improving Maternity Care Using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in Iran
Background: Current Iranian perinatal statistics indicate that maternity care is in need of improvement. In response, we used the quality function deployment (QFD) method to improve the quality of maternity care at an Iranian Social Security hospital. Methods: The major steps of the study were (1)identification of the most important womens needs and requirements via interview (n=18); (2)conduct of a baseline survey with a larger sample of women (n=89) to determine the weight of the requirements; (3)establishment of a set of relationship matrices to link the womens requirements with the best combination of the relevant performance measures, organizational functions and tasks; (4)analysis of the potential failure modes that might be experienced by the functions; (5)redesign of maternity care processes based on the selected functions and failure modes; and (6) implementation of the new care model. We measured maternal satisfaction and caesarean birth rates before and after implementation of the new care model. Results: Six necessary organizational functions and three potential failure modes were identified as the basis for the new process development to satisfy the top twenty needs and requirements. Introduction of the new model of care improved womens satisfaction level significantly on 16 of the 20 items (p<0.0001) compared with the baseline. Seventy-eight percent of the women experienced care consistent with the new model and fewer women had a caesarean birth (30% compared with 42% previously). Conclusion: Introduction of the quality function deployment method to redesign maternity care processes improved womens satisfaction levels, and was associated with a reduction in the rate of caesarean section.
Health care quality Quality function deployment (QFD) Maternity care Patient satisfaction Caesarean section
Siamak Aghlmand Aboulfath Lameei Rhonda Small
Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran Uromiyeh University of Medical Sciences, Iran La Trobe University, Australia
国际会议
The 14th International Symposium on Quality Function Deployment(第14届国际质量功能展开研讨会)
北京
英文
121-135
2008-09-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）