Case Studies

PIONEER HEALTH CARE COMPANY INSISTS ON QUALITY

With several notable business awards under its belt, Nelson's Independent Nursing Practice has implemented the Q Base quality management system to ensure ongoing quality. The enterprising, privately owned health care business aimed for excellent service when it commenced practice eight years ago.

It was obvious that we had to be good to continue to give good service, says Annette Milligan, who with business partner Flavia Goulding, moved away from hospital employment to set up their own business to sell their knowledge and expertise.

Today the Independent Nursing Practice is regarded as a leader among the growing band of privately owned nursing and health care businesses. The thriving Nelson based company employs six staff to provide people with accessible health care and health education covering such vital areas as stress management, self-esteem, sexual harassment and first aid. Family planning advice is available together with comprehensive health checks. And the education services are offered to employees and students of all ages as well as to the general public.

It's exciting to be in the forefront of a new type of nursing where nurses have a depth of business experience and can provide value-for-money clinical and educational services, says Annette Milligan whose company has just added a prestigious Commonwealth Award for Excellence for Women's Health Programme to its business achievements. She believes the work the practice has done toward achieving Q Base certification has been instrumental in winning the award.

We are thrilled to receive this acknowledgment of the service we offer and to enable other countries to see how the Practice runs through the Internet. We are pioneers in our field but the competition is growing and we needed to ensure the most efficient day to day management of our business in order to survive. I have learned through experience that if the service falls down the systems, rather than the people who use them, are largely to blame.

Annette Milligan says the company decided to work toward the Q Base quality management system because of the smaller scale of the Independent Nursing Practice. She contacted the Nelson Business Development Board which is one of several around the country offering Q-Base certification courses in cooperation with Telarc New Zealand.

I had looked at various quality systems and felt Q Base suited us well because of its smaller business application and price. Implementing Q-Base has been a lot of work but having to scrutinise our systems and structure and having to refine them has proved invaluable, says Annette. People who run businesses often have everything in their head. But what would happen if they got run over by a bus?

Annette says if she implemented Q-Base a second time round she would extend the process from six to nine months to ease the pressure. However the staff at Independent Nursing Practice have welcomed the results and are relieved that the systems are now clearly committed to paper.

Having a formalised quality management system has smoothed everyone's day and empowered them. It's reassuring for the staff to be able to go straight to the manual for the answers they need. They are enthusiastic about the benefits. For example, the Q-Base process has helped create a much safer work place. And quality and correct procedures are critical in the health care business.

The manual is regularly updated to ensure that useful, new information is included and Annette says that implementing quality management systems should never be regarded as a finite process.

Q-Base has consolidated the efficiencies that already existed in our business and is one of the reasons why we won a recent contract from a major health funder. The way we use Q-Base will determine our on-going efficiency.

Our investment in the certification process would also be hard to beat in terms of value for money. It has already had an indirect affect on our bottom line.

The Business Development Board environment in which several businesses worked toward implementing the quality management system also proved helpful, says Annette.