A comparative study on results of two hospitals in Tehran based on the Organizational Excellence Model

Abstract Background: During recent years, due to the importance of health services quality, the health service managers have been paying enormous attention to improvement of health care quality and therefore, the Organizational Excellence Model is increasingly in use as a competition framework for recognition of achievement towards the organizational quality, performance excellence, and also the growth of organizational knowledge regarding the quality and performance excellence. Objectives: To assess the results of two hospitals affiliated to Social Security Organization in Tehran based on the Organizational Excellence Model. Methods: The present work was a cross-sectional study carried out at two hospitals named as Alborz and Panzdah-e-Khordad in 2005. Both hospitals were granted an ISO 9001 certification. The data gathering tool consisted of an EFQM questionnaire filled in during group working sessions, interview with hospital managers, and also the available documents kept at different wards. Data were collected according to the "four criteria of results" in the hospitals. Findings: The highest scores were gained in Panzdah-e-Khordad hospital in key performance results (56.5%) followed by customer results (46.1%), society results (40.6%), and people results (39%). Totally, our findings showed that Panzdah-e-Khordad hospital achieved a higher score (236.1out of a total of 500 points) compared to Alborz hospital with 212.2 points. Conclusion: It is believed that the health care area is one of the best fields for application of the model towards the performance excellence and gaining better organizational results and hence, it seem that the model has a high potential in responding to problems commonly seen in health sector.