Total Quality Management: The Health Care Pioneers.

Total Quality Management: The Health Care Pioneers, a new American Hospital Association (AHA) book, was written by Mara Minerva Melum and Marie Kuchuris Sinioris together with almost 40 health care innovators who contributed case studies or participated in personal interviews. Directed to health

care administrators, chief executive officers, medical staff leaders, board directors, and quality management professionals, this book is an "executive's guide to the principles of total quality management (TQM) as exemplified by the experiences and achievements of health care institutions and their pioneering leaders.

TQM is a customer-driven process that applies the scientific method to the improvement of organizational management systems. Because the scientific method is fundamental to health care, and health care's focus on quality is total, hospitals and other health care institutions are ideal candidates for TQM. Almost without exception, health care providers in the United States are currently implementing or investigating TQM applications in their own organizations.

Part One of this book, "Lessons from the Health Care Pioneers: The Key Success Factors," discusses in detail the six key success factors for TQM: visionary leadership, commitment to customers, trained teams, physician involvement, TQM process, and alignment of management systems. Each of the first six chapters introduces the major issues and the action options available to support a key success factor and then illustrates the implementation of the success factor with case studies.

Part Two, "The Next Frontiers of TQM," brings together the ideas of pioneers currently investigating future directions for the implementation and advancement of TQM in health care institutions. The discussions in Part Two explore subjects such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award criteria and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' agenda for change. Advances in clinical outcomes measurement, benchmarking, and TQM evaluation and improvement are also investigated, as are the future roles of physicians and executives in TQM and changes in graduate training programs for health care managers. Another chapter offers an example of the role TQM plays in the relationships between health care institutions and their independent suppliers. Finally, breakthroughs in quality management thinking, and methodology are presented as examples of the continuing maturation of TQM as a vital management process and tool.

Mara Minerva Melum is president of Mara Melum and Associates in St. Paul, and Marie Kuchuris Sinioris is corporate vice-president of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago and senior vice-president and chief operating officer of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Health Plans.