Quality improvement is needed to meet the demands for quality while simultaneously reducing the cost of delivered health care. In a competitive market of corporate hospitals, quality improvement would lower the proportion of unit cost relative to potential revenue thereby increasing profit. For public hospitals, the mandate for 'minimum quality', which is the basis for accreditation, could also...

The emergence of the global economy has transformed the interdepartmental nature of a transnational enterprise into a highly collaborative oriented team. This transformation enables the enterprise to lower its transaction and coordination costs and increase its competitive advantage in the global market. This study investigates such a so-called intra-supply chain system that exists in present-d...

Specifying software quality for a product that has still to be developed is difficult for the purchaser or supplier. The purchaser needs to understand clearly and be able to communicate his/her requirements for the product to be developed. The supplier needs to be certain he/she understands the requirement, and is able to assess with confidence whether it is possible to provide the product with...

Two incentive experiments were conducted in different online access panels. Experiment 1 was carried out in a commercial market research panel. It examined whether three different types of promised incentives (redeemable bonus points, money lottery and gift lottery), four different amounts of bonus points or raffled money, and two different denominations of raffled money influenced response qua...

This paper considers an economic production quantity (EPQ) model with imperfect production processes, in which the setup cost and process quality are functions of capital expenditure. The mathematical model is derived to investigate the effects of an imperfect production process on the optimal production cycle time when capital investment strategies in setup reduction and process quality improv...

abstract background and objective: proficiency testing schemes as a part of quality system in clinical and research laboratory centers provides the opportunity to evaluate the quality of test results. in this paper, we try to introduce the proficiency testing schemes as a useful method for achieving standardization and homogenization of test results in clinical and research laboratory centers. ...

background and objectives: the iranian ministry of health and medical education has introduced clinical gov­ernance as the accepted model of hospital healthcare improvement. subsequently, a growing movement for implementing clinical governance in health facilities has emerged. this study aimed to explore the opinions of the relevant experts and executives to provide insight into current challen...

evaluating the investment that healthcare organisations make in quality improvement requires knowledge of impact at multiple levels, including patient care, workforce and other organisational resources. the degree to which these resources help organisations to survive and thrive in the challenging contexts in which healthcare is designed and delivered is unknown. investigating this question fro...