House of Quality Analysis in Health Care

Background: Adopting a formal and reliable method for linking patient requirements with the relevant performance measures of a care process is a top priority for high quality clinical care. Objective: To describe the concept and process employed in house of quality analysis, the heart of quality function deployment, b y providing a step-by-step methodology and a case study from the maternity ward of Fayazbakhsh hospital in Iran. Methodology: We considered the house of quality analysis as a process with both input and output data. Major input data were patient requirements that were converted to key performance measures and targets, as principle output data, by two matrices including a relationship matrix and a correlation matrix. A case study: We illustrate the steps of translating the top 20 maternal requirements into six key performance measures throughout the house of quality analysis. Based on identified key performance measures, we also identified six necessary organizational functions to meet the 20 selected maternal requirements and increase maternal satisfaction. Discussion: The house of quality analysis provides a unique and rigorous method to translate patient information into relevant process performance measures. This is a key step in clinical process improvement. However, it is time-consuming and complex to adopt. Decreasing the amount of input data can simplify the house of quality analysis.

Keywords:

Quality , quality function deployment (QFD) , house of quality (HoQ) , maternity care , Iran