The only thing that is constant in healthcare is change. To help mitigate the anxiety that this change can cause, an astute healthcare organization should have processes and measures in place that will alert its leaders when their current processes are getting out of control. This is why Six Sigma can be a tremendously valuable resource for healthcare organizations.
Our Healthcare Industry Is Facing Difficult Challenges
The healthcare industry is confronted with challenging issues on a daily basis, not only from employees and patients, but also from federal and state regulations.
Employees of healthcare organizations are humans and humans are known to make mistakes. These mistakes can lead to medical errors that result in hefty fines for the organization, or even cause patient fatalities.
Patients and their family members do not particularly care for the length of time they have to wait to be seen by a physician, nor do they care for the length of time it takes to be scheduled for follow-up exams and/or testing. Healthcare organizations also have to endure the unrelenting complaints from patients regarding the cost of their medical treatments.
Federal and state regulations cause healthcare organizations and their providers many challenges, including a reduction in margins, extensive documentation requirements, heightened requirements in regards to patient confidentiality, and the list goes on.
How Can The Issues Be Resolved?
In order to resolve the numerous issues that the healthcare industry faces, healthcare organizations need to learn and understand the roots of the issues they are facing and then develop action plans and processes that they can put into action. To do this, they must either rely on their leadership teams to understand and resolve the issues as they arise, or they can employ individuals certified in Six Sigma to work with staff members to understand the current processes, determine which areas of the current processes are being affected, develop new processes that will resolve their issues, and identify measures that will alert the leadership team when the new processes are no longer under control.
How Six Sigma Can Help
Six Sigma can help by commissioning trained individuals to use Six Sigma tools that are selected for use based on the issue that needs to be addressed and the specific Six Sigma methodology being used, DMAIC and DMADV. Both of these methodologies are used to drive an organization’s defined defects to nearly zero, the DMAIC methodology used to define, measure, analyze, improve, and control existing processes while the DMADV methodology is used to define, measure, analyze, design, and verify new processes.
A Real-life Example of Six Sigma in Healthcare
In 2000, Mount Carmel Health System (MCHS) decided to implement Six Sigma due to the reduced margins and ongoing layoffs that were caused by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. MCHS had budgeted $750 million in revenue at that time, but only made $500,000 in net revenue. Even with this reduction in revenue, MCHS decided to invest in their future by training selected employees to work on projects that focused on efficiency, throughput, revenue and cost reduction. These selected employees completed four weeks of Six Sigma training, which focused on organizational improvement processes. They systematically implemented changes throughout the hospital and, by 2004, MCHS had saved more than $40 million from their Six Sigma projects.
