Blog Post 11: Quality Management

Question: Identify and describe a quality management process that is utilized in your field of interest. Typically this process is in response or guided by a professional organization in that field. Identify that organization.


My field of interest is Physical Therapy and one tool that facilities use as a source of quality management is satisfaction surveys and questionnaires. This method of quality control for Physical Therapy departments is very useful because it allows the therapists to see how they are doing in comparison to the other Physical Therapists in their department. Also surveys like this are sometimes are used to compare the quality of care patients are receiving among different facilities. Sometimes these surveys will be randomly handed out by organizations such as, the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Survey, to patients that are receiving Physical Therapy treatment. These surveys will have questions on them that pertain to how well the patient was treated and the services that were provided for them.
     Other surveys are used for strictly internal purposes and are designed more for comparing Physical Therapists within a specific department. An example of this document has been created by various organizations, however a more well-known one is the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). The questions on this survey are very similar to the ones that are randomly handed out by external sources. The main point is that these are tools that Physical Therapists use to keep them in check on how well they are doing. They are devices used for quality management.

http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/80/9/853.fullmaxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=goldstein&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&volume=80&resourcetype=HWCIT