The Annals of the University of Oradea. Economic Sciences TOM XXXI, 1 st Issue, July 2022 374 QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY – A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS Emil Lucian CRIȘAN 1,2 , Alin Adrian MIHĂILĂ 1 1 Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babeș- Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 2 Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania emil.crisan@econ.ubbcluj.ro alin.mihaila@econ.ubbcluj.ro Abstract: Quality management has evolved in business for already a century. It was a continuous development; new concepts have emerged and have been used without giving up on previously developed constructs. For example, Shewhart has used the PDCA cycle under an initial form in 1939, but it is still widely used as a core construct of the ISO 9000 quality management family of standards. The question we address within this article is how quality management has been adopted within the healthcare industry, probably one of the most reticent industries when it comes to adopting new technologies and solutions. In order to answer this question, we firstly review the quality management concepts developed within the healthcare industry. Secondly, we detail a framework for the adoption of quality management initiatives (QMIs) in other industries, as a reference for managers working in the healthcare industry to guide their actions. In the third part, a review of the most relevant quality management initiatives within the healthcare industry are presented. The fourth part is a presentation of the most common issues related to process management in the healthcare industry, one of the most important areas related to quality management these days. The fifth part concludes with some advices for healthcare industry managers who are to further adopt quality management in their organizations. Keywords: quality management; healthcare industry; process management; quality management initiative. JEL Classification: L15; M10. 1. The development of quality management concepts within the healthcare industry Healthcare quality management research and practice have evolved somehow in parallel with other business quality management. The quality management practices and concepts promoted in industry by Shewart, Deming, Juran, Crosby, Garvin, and others, are rarely mentioned in healthcare quality management papers, as the ones provided by Donabedian (Donabedian, 1966, 1988). Quality in industry has been defined in many ways, by referring to Parasuraman’s meeting or exceeding customer