EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) and Libraries: an organisational challenge for improving the provided services

One way to meet the challenges in creating a high performance organization in health care is the approach of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). This model - initiated, in the tradition of the American Malcolm Baldrige Award, by the European Commission (EU) in 1988, 14 European multi-national organizations, 664 European Organizations at present - is one of the four models used by the health organisations of Western Europe to guarantee the quality of care rendered by their services. The others are: International Standards Organisation (ISO), Accreditation of healthcare services and Peer Review. The main feature of EFQM approach is in output of services instead of procedures and in self evaluation. Many tools have been developed in order to implement the EFQM Model which can be used as a self-assessment instrument of a health care organization or of a part of it. So, on the basis of empirical and theoretical considerations, we decided to use this approach for assessing and improving the services provided by our organization - a specialised library of a National Cancer Institute located in the North East of Italy, Centro di Riferimento Oncologico Aviano, IRCCS. Our library has a special section for patients called "Biblioteca per i pazienti" and is deeply involved in a Italianmulticentric collaborative project of information for cancer patients "Azalea" (siteweb: www.azaleaweb.it). The project is granted by "Alleanza contro il Cancro", the network of Italian oncologic Institutes. Starting from a general survey about the "Activities and Resources of the Scientific Library: usefulness and limits", using the " Common Assseement Framework" (CAF), a tool specifically developed for public services, to assess the 10 points emerged from the survey. Taking advantage from the Work Laboratories locally organised by the Italian EFQM agency of FORMEZ, we aim to audit our services and participate to the Quality Award of Italian Public Administration. I In