Exploring the Maturity of Quality Management in Saudi Healthcare: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

In Saudi Arabia, managing the quality of healthcare was considered decades ago. Yet, internal and external consumers were not fully in favour of management efforts and practises. The current study was initiated by quantitatively analysing patients’ complaints that pointed out weaknesses in non-clinical services, which was assumed to be an indicator of weakness in quality management (QM). A mixed-methods approach triangulated patients’ complaints with managers’ experience to cast light on the maturity level of QM. Interpretive phenomenological analysis explored managers’ knowledge of quality concepts along with their involvement in QM. The experience of 24 managers with QM was categorised into four themes: (a) misunderstanding, for example, accreditation; (b) misconception, for example, employees’ empowerment; (c) misrecognition, for example, cost of poor quality and (d) conceptuality, for example, external threats. The current findings detected immature QM systems that would hinder the employment of quality principles. Therefore, despite the efforts and resources dedicated to the implementation of quality practises, such efforts would still fall far below expectations unless managers learn how to enable employees to do their work effectively rather than instructing them to do their work in compliance with quality requirements.