Food-Service-Manual-for-Health-Care-Institutions

Food Service Manual for Health Care Institutions
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comparisons should be made using standards that are similar to each other in size, governing
authority, self-operation, management, services provided, or the ability to share meaningful
information.
Many professional food service organizations offer benchmarking services. There are also
benchmarking companies that collect data on a nationwide scale and that will compare one
organization against another. These companies set standards and costs for their services.
Summary
In the past, health care institutions measured the quality of clinical care with an emphasis on
quality assessment. Quality assessment focused on reactive or retrospective monitoring of individual
variance and performance. The recent emphasis on CQI views quality in terms of both
process improvement and customer perspective.
Continuous quality improvement is influenced by regulatory agencies, but a qualitycommitted
organization will practice it with or without outside influence. Benefits of CQI include
customer satisfaction, employee morale through involvement and ownership, and a costeffective
business approach that offers better value to the customer. The best reason for an organization
to adopt a CQI agenda is to compete at a higher level, improve quality, and reduce cost.
An organization can expect to generate from 20 to 30 percent in cost savings by implementing
a CQI process. The costs of implementing a CQI process include the labor for training
and conducting team meetings, training materials, and possibly the use of a consultant.
These costs are more than offset by the savings generated when processes are improved to
decrease non-value-added steps. Occasionally the solution to a process or system problem will
cost more in the short term to correct than to leave it as is. But when the cost of the solution
is considered over the long term, with the customer in mind and in regard to total savings from
process improvement, it may be determined to be the best solution.
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