Quality assurance: a process for continuous improvement.

As E.S. Woodlard Jr., Chairman of Du Pont states, "Continuous improvement is vitally important in today's environment. The world is full of savvy, agile competitors who know quality makes a difference." Dentists are part of the health care industry and compete for their patients' discretionary dollars. Careful attention to the development of an integrated RM/QA program for their dental offices is one means of ethical marketing for patient satisfaction. Lessons from the competitive hospitals in the United States and current practices of successful service industries should form part of the framework of the QA component of a practice. A marketing plan is good sense in today's turbulent economic environment and ethical marketing will make the risky "selling" of dental treatment unnecessary.