You are the newly hired hospital administrator for Healthcare-U.S. System, a national system of tertiary hospitals located throughout the U.S. Your organization has just approved new monies for developing new quality management initiatives. The individual hospitals have implemented their own quality management programs. Some of these programs have produced stellar results and high levels of patient satisfaction, although others have had much less success.

Your focus as the newly hired administrator is to develop a corporate quality improvement program that will be standard throughout the company's hospitals. The quality improvement plan must be responsive to any local needs or issues. How will you craft that plan? What will you include in your plan? Include some specific examples of what you might measure. How will you get buy-in from your individual organizations that already have their own plan?