Key Points

• Six Sigma is one of the most widely used business methodologies today.
• There is no question that healthcare is one of the most critical industries in need of organizational efficiencies.
• Anything that can be done to improve patient care or patient satisfaction should be immediately welcomed.

The hope is that anything the world can do to improve the overall healthcare situation is going to be beneficial. Whether it’s more hospitals or making our existing hospitals more efficient, everything is on the table to help. It’s with this in mind that we can look at something like Six Sigma, which is one of the most popular business methodologies, and how it might benefit hospitals in the long run.

As is the case with any field that Six Sigma is trying to benefit, there is an opportunity to look at how to improve healthcare through heavy data collection. There is no confusion that Six Sigma is a heavily data-driven process that looks to not only improve work, but also to identify any defects and remove them from the workstream.

What Is Six Sigma?

Initially developed by Motorola in the 1980s, Six Sigma has become one of the most popular and widely used business methodologies in the world. Not only does it have practical applications in healthcare, but it can also be utilized in various other industries, including manufacturing, finance, and numerous service sectors.

The goal of Six Sigma is to help any organization, business, or entity achieve a level of quality that is near perfect. While perfection is difficult to achieve, the hope is that you can reduce the sheer number of inefficiencies in any processes, of which hospitals and healthcare cannot escape their own set of challenges.

Key Principles of Six Sigma

Regardless of the type of healthcare changes that need to be updated, fixed, or changed as part of Six Sigma, it will follow the five key steps, better known as DMAIC.

Define

The first step for Six Sigma changes is known as Define, which, in healthcare terms, would focus on properly determining who the patients are and what needs to be measured. Separately, an organization would also want to define what goals it hopes to achieve as part of any Six Sigma review in this stage as well.

Measure

In the Measure step, the second phase of Six Sigma, this is the opportunity to examine the steps a healthcare organization needs to take to move forward. In addition, it will provide a chance to determine what data sets a healthcare organization wants to look at. This might be the level of care provided, patient satisfaction, and the cost of services.

Analyze

With the third step of Six Sigma, you have the Analyze phase, which involves analyzing all the data and identifying the causes of delays or obstacles in patient care. This may also be an opportunity to integrate Value Stream Mapping alongside Six Sigma to lay out the entire flow, from when a patient enters a facility to when they leave, and identify where operational excellence is failing.

Improve

The Improve phase is now the opportunity to look at all of the problems that have been identified through statistical analysis in the previous step and figure out how to make improvements. This could mean something like adding more staff in an emergency room or reducing the amount of time it takes a patient to check into a service facility.

Control

The final step is the Control phase, which ensures that any solutions implemented in the Improve phase are now in effect. Let’s assume that in the Improve step, the focus was to reduce the time it takes a patient to check into an emergency room. The Control phase would now look to see if wait times are being reduced based on any implemented changes.

Applying Six Sigma In Healthcare Situations

Administration Work

When you look at how to best apply Six Sigma in healthcare and hospital environments, you can get started with administration work, undoubtedly one of the more frustrating aspects of healthcare. It won’t come as any surprise to learn that healthcare paperwork can lead to some pretty fast bottlenecks for both the patient and any healthcare organization.

Looking at how to apply Six Sigma tools can be used to not just reduce errors, but also find the bottlenecks by looking at where the volume of paperwork can potentially be reduced. There also might be some opportunities for things like automation or AI that can help automate some tasks that humans might find redundant and slow.

Separately, within the administration flow, you can also look at how a healthcare provider can increase their patient satisfaction rates. This might look something like adding another check-in desk or using automatic check-in systems that don’t require waiting for a person. All of this can help move things along faster, so a patient can be seen and get the care they need.

Patient Care

Speaking of patient care, you also have an opportunity to do things that coincide directly with the administrative work by reducing patient wait times. However, this can also go a lot further by looking at the collection of data on surgery procedures or medication to see if any errors have occurred.

In the case of surgery, is there better equipment available that might help speed along surgeries while also reducing the level of risk for anyone on the operating table? If the goal is fewer surgical errors or medication mistakes, there are opportunities in the collection of data to see how these processes can be adjusted and better managed.

Perhaps it’s as simple as adding another layer of review for any medication that is given that has recently seen a rise in being given in error. While this might sound like adding another bottleneck, it’s also an opportunity to prevent an error that could do a patient harm.

There could also be an opportunity to reduce medication errors by focusing more on a standardized process for prescribing, dispensing, and then administering medication in a hospital.

Benefits of Six Sigma In Hospitals

Patient Safety

At the very top of the list of reasons why Six Sigma is so critical in healthcare is patient safety. By reducing errors and emphasizing improvements through data analysis, the level of errors should be immediately reduced, which means any dangers to patients should also be reduced in parallel.

Operational Efficiency

Another big reason to implement Six Sigma in healthcare is the hope that it will lead to enhanced operational efficiencies. Reduced waste means a bigger bottom line for the healthcare provider, but it also means that unnecessary steps that could impact patient satisfaction are also eliminated. In other words, it’s a win-win for everyone.

Lower Healthcare Costs

Any opportunity to lower healthcare costs is going to be welcomed by healthcare providers and customers. Lower costs mean improved patient satisfaction as well as loyalty, especially for doctors’ offices, where there are always plenty to choose from. There is also an opportunity for healthcare providers to eliminate waste that is frustrating them as well.

Staff Satisfaction

While a lot of the emphasis on Six Sigma in healthcare is around the patients, there are benefits for the staff as well. Any problem-solving that can be done or things that can eliminate mountains of paperwork are likely to improve job satisfaction and productivity. It should go without saying that happier healthcare workers are going to lead to happier patients.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

At the end of the day, reading about Six Sigma is a must for anyone who has an interest in this system and business methodology. It’s so popular and widespread in use that even this very website is named after it. Of course, if you want to read more about Six Sigma and healthcare, these case studies will help you get an even clearer picture of why it matters.

When you’re done with that article, you can keep going with other Six Sigma topics and healthcare, like how to best implement Six Sigma inside a healthcare organization. Finally, jump right into the return on investment for Six Sigma rollouts, so you can get a practical understanding of exactly how to measure success.

Conclusion

Overall, Six Sigma can play a super critical role in ensuring that healthcare organizations are more efficient and deliver better patient care. The good news is that this is an opportunity to do something that is truly going to help people and see the results of that almost immediately. Whether it’s through patient satisfaction or reduced wait times in an emergency room, finding success will happen quickly.