Keeping a watch on product quality

By ESTELLE SARNEY

The people overseeing Gisborne's failed cervical screening procedures would do well to consult John Kenny's organisation for advice on quality assurance.

The new president of the New Zealand Organisation for Quality (NZOQ) also works with the quality projects team at Christchurch Women's Hospital.

"Part of our quality control is regularly auditing the labs to confirm that the people reading our patients' slides know what they're doing and are doing so with the urgency that's required," he says.

"The monitoring of the Gisborne lab's performance looks a bit suspect. The reporting of whether it came up to standards expected of it wasn't happening with the right frequency or reaching the right people."

About 30 per cent of the NZOQ's 1100 members come from the health sector. Others are from government agencies, the education sector, service and tourism companies and manufacturing firms.

It brings people together at a local level through lunch meetings, education seminars and site visits, to share strategies for enhancing and maintaining work and product quality.

A recent visit to the police communications centre in Christchurch, for example, was attended by about 60 members from a range of workplaces.

It also runs an annual national conference with international speakers, reports to the Government on the impact on economic development of promoting quality for consumers, provides an internet network for members and runs courses through polytechnics, such as the national certificate in quality assurance.

"Because our membership is so diverse we cannot teach hard-and-fast rules, but try to empower individuals to apply knowledge to their own situation," says Mr Kenny.

As president he wants to strengthen local networks and the organisation's collaboration with professional organisations such as the Institute of Management. He has been a member of the NZOQ for 12 years and has worked at Christchurch Women's Hospital for the past two.

He has previously held quality management roles at DB Breweries in Timaru, Baxter Healthcare pharmaceuticals in Auckland, and the SouthFert fertiliser company in Invercargill.

"Those jobs sound diverse, but quality management principles are transferable and can be equally effective when applied to different sectors appropriately. I didn't go into health care spouting the sales and marketing speak I might have at DB, but I still see the hospital as having three groups of customers - patients, staff and the board.

"Part of gaining customer satisfaction among our patients is ensuring clinical competence, which includes the quality of our birthing facilities and our cervical screening procedures."

Mr Kenny sees his full-time job as a valuable insight into the demands and needs of the NZOQ's health sector members. "We are now seeing people in the health sector who have expertise in quality planning and auditing," he says.

A quality manager in a health care organisation should be monitoring suppliers and ensuring that they - in Gisborne's case, the cervical screening lab - are able to meet the standards required of them.