Development of Total Quality Management framework for Libyan health care organisations

Primary health care is the first stage for the national health. As such it is considered as the first stage of communication between the citizen, family and the society. The main objective for any primary healthcare is to meet the need of the individual at high quality, and improve the performance of the healthcare system. The quality here is what the patient receives with regard to excellent and safe medical and health services. According to the available literature and based on the author’s many visits and preliminary investigation regarding Libyan healthcare sector in general and Tripoli healthcare sector in particular, itjjas been proven that the reality of government hospitals in Libya is that: these hospitals are facing many problems opposing their improvement, continuity and ability to compete. Based on a series of comprehensive questionnaires, the weakness in the current system are identified, and also found that Total Quality Management (TQM) would provide the solution for Libyan Healthcare system. TQM is a way of managing to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility, and competitiveness of a business as a whole. The literature illustrated that there are many models and frameworks in the field of TQM. However, the quality gurus have never agreed about a specific fiamework or implementation procedure. In addition, there is lack of a general model in health care, and there is no clear agreement as to the way in which TQM should be implemented in a health care sector. Therefore, the focus of this study is to identify an appropriate TQM framework for Libyan Jiealth care, organisations and benchmarking them and distinguish their competitive advantage, in order to achieve performance excellence. A comprehensive literature review related to TQM is carried out to have a clear insight into the TQM and its application in health service, ^questionnaire survey method is adopted to gather the data and information, which form the basis for the development of the proposed TQM framework. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS and Analytical Hierarchy Process AHP are utilised to analyse the collected data and views frommanagers. and employees in the organisations under investigation. In addition, in order to achieve the aim of this study two models are developed and TQM framework that covers most aspects of TQM starting from top management awareness until even promoting continuous improvement is developed. The verification and validation process of the proposed TQM framework and its implementation stage implied that the proposed framework factors and stages are important for improving the quality performance of healthcare service in the organisation under investigation.