Kammoun Amira, Hachicha Wafik, Aljuaid Awad M
OLID Research Laboratory, Higher Institute of Industrial Management Sfax, University of Sfax, Technopolis of Sfax 3021, Tunisia.
Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia.
Healthcare (Basel). 2021 May 7;9(5):544. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9050544.
Healthcare facilities are facing major issues and challenges. Hospitals continuously search approaches to improve operations quality, optimize performance, and minimize costs. Specifically, an efficient hospital sterilization process (HSP) allows reusable medical devices (RMDs) to be more quickly available for healthcare activities. In this context, this paper describes an integrated approach developed to analyze HSP and to identify the most critical improvement actions. This proposed approach integrates four quality tools and techniques. Firstly, a structured analysis and design technique (SADT) methodology is applied to describe HSP as a hierarchy of activities and functions. Secondly, the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) method is used as a risk assessment step to determine which activity processes need careful attention. Thirdly, a cause-effect analysis technique is used as a tool to help identify all the possible improvement actions. Finally, priority improvement actions are proposed using the quality function deployment (QFD) method. To validate the proposed approach, a real sterilization process used at the maternity services of Hedi-Cheker Hospital in the governorate of Sfax, Tunisia, was fully studied. For this specific HSP, the proposed approach results showed that the two most critical activities were (1) improving the coordination between the sterilization service and the surgery block and (2) minimizing the average duration of the sterilization process to ensure the availability of RMDs in time.
医疗保健机构正面临重大问题和挑战。医院不断探寻提高运营质量、优化绩效以及降低成本的方法。具体而言，高效的医院消毒流程（HSP）能使可重复使用的医疗设备（RMDs）更快地用于医疗活动。在此背景下，本文描述了一种为分析医院消毒流程并确定最关键改进措施而开发的综合方法。该方法整合了四种质量工具和技术。首先，应用结构化分析与设计技术（SADT）方法将医院消毒流程描述为活动和功能的层次结构。其次，使用失效模式与效应分析（FMEA）方法作为风险评估步骤，以确定哪些活动流程需要特别关注。第三，使用因果分析技术作为工具，帮助识别所有可能的改进措施。最后，运用质量功能展开（QFD）方法提出优先改进措施。为验证所提出的方法，对突尼斯斯法克斯省赫迪 - 切克医院妇产科使用的实际消毒流程进行了全面研究。对于这个特定的医院消毒流程，所提出方法的结果表明，两个最关键的活动是：（1）改善消毒服务与手术科室之间的协调；（2）尽量缩短消毒流程的平均时长，以确保可重复使用医疗设备及时可用。
