Table of contents
Importance of Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare
Lean Six Sigma is increasingly being used in a variety of industries, including the healthcare sector. The six-sigma methodology has had a significant impact on the healthcare industry. Lean Six Sigma process in Healthcare training lean certification professionals, including doctors and management, are now more aware of the potential problems that could adversely impact the quality of the services provided to patients. They are pushing for Six Sigma in healthcare to achieve better results.
Online six-sigma certification courses will help you gain the necessary knowledge to improve the operational efficiency of the organization. This article contains examples and information about Six Sigma in healthcare.
Healthcare: The Role of Six Sigma
The Healthcare industry and all its stakeholders (e.g. hospitals, medical centers for tests, care homes, etc.) deal with a lot of patient data. Any small error or misplacement of this data could have devastating consequences, posing a risk to patients’ lives. It is therefore important to ensure that the healthcare sector’s workflow and processes are flawless.
Lean Six Sigma’s data-driven process to quality improvement in healthcare provides significant levels of correction and advancement to healthcare systems and processes. The DMAIC method plays an important role in this process.
Understanding DMAIC
Six Sigma Healthcare improves the quality and efficiency of healthcare operations by following the five steps of DMAIC.
Defines
Answering questions about the goal is the first step. It is important to identify the objectives and take into account the requirements of the customers, in this case, the patients. The processes that need to be improved or measured are thoroughly studied. Factors such as their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement are also evaluated.
Measure
The levels that are considered sufficient can be identified by using statistics and metrics. To determine the quality of healthcare processes, it is common to use metrics and statistics such as service level, cost, clinical excellence, patient satisfaction, and service cost. The benchmark that must be met is established and the measurement methods are also determined.
Analyze
To see which characteristics and loopholes the processes may have, the required data is collected using the tools from Six Sigma.
Improve
A plan is created based on the collected and analyzed data to make modifications to the process. This will result in a significant improvement.
Control
It is not enough to just initiate the improvement. To maintain improvement levels, it is important to monitor them constantly.
Six Sigma can improve patient care to a reasonable degree by using a variety of techniques and tools. Six Sigma Healthcare examples will be shared later. These will demonstrate how six Sigma has helped improve patient care.
Six Sigma healthcare plays an important role in improving healthcare. It reduces the errors that are made during multiple processes such as scheduling patient appointments. The other side is that patient outcomes and lab turnaround times are significantly improved. It is easy to manage the supply chain. In cases of insurance claims, reimbursement can be provided very quickly.
Six Sigma in Healthcare – Benefits, and Advantages
Six Sigma is the next big thing in the business and corporate worlds. It has also revolutionized the healthcare industry. Below are some of the most lauded benefits of six Sigma in healthcare.
Avoiding Making Mistakes
Minor data errors in healthcare can have a significant impact on a patient’s diagnosis or treatment, ultimately leading to serious health problems. Lean Six Sigma measures multiple operational scenarios using empirical data.
The best strategy, which aligns all the actors involved in healthcare (e.g. infrastructure, biological technology, physicians, etc.), is chosen from the many possible outcomes.
This reduces the chances of errors – not more than 4 per million observations at the highest! The healthcare sector has an advantage because mistakes can be caught early and are less costly.
Facilitating Improvement In Patient Care
The six sigma methodology has one of its most important tenets. It focuses on the customer’s requirements. Healthcare sector patients are the customers. Effectively adhering to their needs can improve patient care.
The healthcare professionals who use the Six Sigma methodology to improve their understanding of patients will see them as customers and make their satisfaction their top priority.
The basic features that aid healthcare facilities in achieving their goals include easy access to appointments, 24×7 service, wheelchair accessibility, and clean surroundings. Six Sigma in healthcare places emphasis on improving existing processes and resources, thus improving the quality of healthcare services.
Healthcare Services More Accessible
The healthcare sector can make services more affordable and more accessible by applying six-sigma principles to its processes. This is achieved by identifying waste and decreasing expenditure.
Analyzing healthcare operations can help identify wasteful actions and procedures that do not add value.
Over-employment (such as during non-peak hours), bulk purchasing of health inventory that isn’t used much, etc. The ability to eliminate unneeded expenditures will result in more efficient healthcare that allows patients to access cheaper and better healthcare.
Reduce the length of your stay
The Six Sigma methodology helps healthcare providers to provide better patient care. This automatically reduces the length of their stay. The patient’s health is improved significantly in a shorter time and they are able to leave the hospital sooner.
This achieves both the business and social goals of healthcare facilities.
The challenges of Six Sigma implementation in the Healthcare Industry
The Lean Six Sigma certification is a valuable tool in healthcare and the health industry, but it has its own challenges. Compliance is one of the most difficult challenges Six Sigma professionals face in a healthcare environment. Compliance is a requirement in almost all industries these days. You’ll see this throughout these units. Six Sigma experts need to be creative and strategic in order to overcome healthcare compliance.
Six Sigma professionals should not try to avoid compliance. The regulations in the industry are part of the essential-to-quality characteristics that a Six Sigma team must consider. Six Sigma teams should honor any regulatory requirements and treat them as quality requirements. If you don’t meet that requirement, then you will produce a product or process that isn’t in compliance with quality standards.
This can be frustrating for Six Sigma professionals, especially if they have worked in other industries. Healthcare quality requirements include Malaysia Clinical Practise Guidelines, clinical requirements, and many other requirements from insurance companies, ministries, and federal agencies. These requirements can make it difficult for muda to be implemented (Waste). Duplication, quality control, and overproduction are often required by regulations. Six Sigma teams need to “make the most” of such situations by looking for other areas to work in.
However, it is important to remember that not all muda lean process in healthcare training organizations associated with compliance are necessary. The Six Sigma team’s job is to find unnecessary compliance work and replace them with processes that guarantee quality without waste. This is the second major challenge lean Six Sigma health certification professionals will face in healthcare settings. It is a problem that can be found in all industries and was also covered in the beginning. People get used to doing things a certain way and believe that they must do them that way. In healthcare, this often takes the form of the statement, “We have to do it that way because of the regulation/law/government/accrediting organization.” Six Sigma teams must work hand-in-hand with compliance to understand when this is true and when a more efficient quality process can be put in place.
