Abstract
By considering the recently proposed definitions and metrics, oral healthcare quality management (OHQM) emerges as a distinct field in the wider healthcare area. The goal of this paper is to systematically review quality management initiatives (QMIs) implementation by dental clinics. The research methodology approach is a review of 72 sources that have been analyzed using the Context–Intervention–Mechanism–Outcome Framework (CIMO). The analysis identifies five mechanisms that explain how quality management initiatives are implemented by dental clinics. The simplest QMIs implementations are related to (1) overall quality. The next ones, in terms of complexity, are related to (2) patient satisfaction, (3) service quality, (4) internal processes improvement, and (5) business outcomes. This paper is the first attempt to provide a critical review of this topic and represents an important advancement by providing a theoretical framework that explains how quality management is implemented by practitioners in this field. The results can be used by scholars for advancing their studies related to this emerging research area and by healthcare managers in order to better implement their quality management initiatives.
Highlights
The most common category of triggers of quality management initiatives (QMIs) adoption is patient satisfaction, mentioned as a more patient-centered oral healthcare, or the improvement of the patient–provider relationship (41 studies). This result confirms the increasing importance placed by the patient [70], and that patient satisfaction generally has been accepted as an important element of oral healthcare quality management (OHQM) [34]
The fourth category of dental clinics expected benefits related to QMIs adoption, mentioned in 23 studies, is enhancing service quality of dental care, involving the improvement of the quality of delivered healthcare services, increasing the overall supply of dental services available, and encouraging utilization of dental health services, commitment to provide a high-quality service, achieving and ensuring good service quality to meet or exceed, delivering a more effective oral health service to residents, improving the service quality of care for homeless and vulnerably housed people, etc. [36,44,60,81]
The five mechanisms explain the evolutionary nature of quality adoption in any organization, which usually starts from simple internal processes improvements and later develops a customer focus, followed by a quality management system focus, and a business impact focus, similar to the self-assessment tool for SMEs created by Sturkenboom et al [109]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This paper has been developed considering the emergence of oral healthcare quality management (OHQM) as a distinct field of research in the wider medicine quality management area. The theoretical background of this paper is presented, including more topics as the adoption of quality management initiatives (QMIs) in healthcare, the particularities of oral healthcare and QMIs’ implementation in this field, and the main research streams concerning OHQM. We present our research question within the final paragraph of this section
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