Abstract:

In the last few years, the Romanian healthcare institutions are passing through a general management improvement in order to better meet the voice of the patients, as well as medical employees’ needs and requirements. Thus, for better achieving this objective, a proper tool should be used, respectively the quality function deployment (QFD). This method helps to determine patients’ needs and expectations and thus to create a system that could evaluate these needs and based on them, design an improved management system. The current research will provide a case study which will apply the quality function deployment at a Romanian public hospital, in order to present a model that would take into consideration the patients’ needs as part of an improvement process, compared to other public hospitals. As main method for collecting data, the study will be made on online surveys, as well as direct interviews. The purpose of this study is to introduce an analytical framework focused on patients, along with explaining the use of quality function deployment in the Romanian healthcare system, in order to improve the medical processes and applications. Due to its flexible approach, the main advantage of the suggested framework lies in its facility to integrate in healthcare institutions and in the entire healthcare system, being part of different quality initiatives like Lean management and Six Sigma