Control of payment of suppliers in a public hospital: case study of Onofre Lopes University Hospital – Brazil

Throughout the last decades, the discussion about the quality in the health service has gained global importance, mainly due to the difficulty in reaching a thorough measurement for the performance of health services based on objective criteria. Thus, the purpose of the present study is to evaluate through Control Charts whether the supplier payment process in a public hospital is being completed within the time frames specified by internal corporate administrative resolutions. Initially followed the Montgomery methodology for non-self-correlated phenomena from which the application of individual control charts and moving range was utilized. Following the charts analysis, it became necessary to verify the conformity of the data in relation to the distribution. Hence, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Chi-Square tests were performed, in which it was verified that the Weibull distribution is better suited to the data, and control charts were applied for the Weibull distribution and Capability study. The results of the applications indicated variability in the process, which can be minimized by identifying the bottlenecks inherent to the formalities in the payment process; evaluating the time a given invoice remains with the purchasing coordinator; defining a timeframe necessary to comply with the process verification before validating the invoice and send it to the contract unity; determining the specific time requirements for each stage of the process as to optimize the flow; and establishing key performance indicators in order to attain an in depth understanding of the internal procedures