Physicians’ and Managers’ Approach to Quality - Experience in Italian Hospitals

Literature provides many contributions about quality management and quality improvement. A few authors investigated the kind and strength of contribution to quality from physicians and managers. This study investigates the different approaches of physicians and managers towards managing and improving quality within healthcare organizations. Research questions are focused on the existence of any kind of correlation between physicians’ and quality managers’ skills as regards quality management. Do they work independently or is it possible to find out some relationship between their effort in enforcing service quality. In addition to that, the paper investigates if there is a correlation between organization’s characteristic (dimension, ownership, teaching/not-teaching hospital) and quality of services. The study investigates an Italian regional-wide external assessment program (performed by Joint Commission International) focusing on a selection of item/standard related to physicians and quality managers’ behaviours. The study did not found significant correlation between behaviours and hospitals’ structural characteristics as well as between physicians’ managerial behaviours and managers’ behaviours as regards to quality. Physicians’ and managers’ contributions are independent to each other. The influence of managers on clinical behaviours is weak. Quality management depends mainly on people, not on structural elements.