The need for implementing TQM in the health care industry: an empirical investigation.

The U.S. health care industry is facing an era of increased competition, declining profits, decreed hospital utilization, and consolidation. By reviewing existing literature on the application of total quality management in the health care industry, and by surveying a hospital in which this technique has been recently applied, this paper shows that service providing organization can indeed use the same methods used by manufacturing organizations to increase quality.