The healthcare business is at the frontline of simplifying operations to provide better patient care. Six Sigma Implementation in hospitals and pharmaceuticals assists nurses and physicians in reducing errors, providing accurate diagnoses, and reducing wastage.
Patients may check-in, be treated, and check out on time since their records are kept effectively. Healthcare sector has seen a significant revolution as a result of Six Sigma.
Six Sigma helps to cut down on wait time
During peak hours or some specific seasons, more patients visit the hospitals. This might be difficult for hospitals to manage and overwhelm the medical staff. With Six Sigma training, the admin staff can drastically reduce patients’ wait time. Waiting is not just caused by a low doctor-to-patient ratio but also by inept hospital processes.
According to Peter Peterka, President of SixSigma.com, Six Sigma guarantees that patients’ information is thoroughly analyzed, records well managed, reduces major variations caused by doctors, and eliminates delays caused in the registry. Waiting time will be significantly reduced when the hospital can identify and address areas in their system that need an overhaul.
Reduction of medical errors
There is no better place where efficacy is required than a hospital because patients don’t have the luxury of patience. People’s lives are on the line in a hospital environment hence the need to streamline quality service. There is no room for error and mistakes.
Professional negligence is a huge thing many Americans grapple with within the healthcare industry. Every year, thousands of lawsuits related to doctors’ misconduct in handling patients correctly are reported. Lives get lost because doctors and nurses commit medical errors resulting in the loss of lives annually. Hospitals that implement Lean Six Sigma have seen a significant reduction in medical errors.
Increase number of surgical operations
Surgical cancelation is one of the causes of ineffective processes in hospitals, especially when they happen unplanned. Surgical patients end up missing operations due to issues with quality management, time a patient was admitted, operation notice, and management of test reports done futilely. Cross-departmental issues in the hospital end up in the surgical room, which causes unplanned surgical cancellation, among other significant quality management issues.
Implementing Six Sigma optimizes the communication process when a patient is admitted to the checkout. A proper information system that streamlines the virtual bed management and improves the timing of evaluating anesthesia helps hospitals considerably reduce cases of unplanned surgery cancellation.
Increase patient feedback
Using Six Sigma methodology in hospitals enables doctors and nurses to understand the internal medical processes, knowledge on coordinated patient care, and improved documentation of patient records. This goes a long way in helping patients be free and available to give positive and honest feedback on how they were treated by the hospital.
Patients’ feedback provides vital information about what they think about the quality of service offered by healthcare providers. Working on patient feedback helps healthcare providers identify what works successfully and which processes need to be updated. Implementing Six Sigma helps the hospital organize and implement feedback mechanisms hence reducing complaints.
Six Sigma reduces waste in healthcare
The cost of healthcare keeps increasing because of the overuse of resources. Unnecessary variation in the healthcare industry is expensive, which leads to poor delivery of services. Reducing unnecessary variations is a sure opportunity healthcare operators can use to reduce costs that can be channeled to enhance value.
Six Sigma is a certain way to utilize resources in a hospital. Hospitals greatly save by implementing comprehensive, systematic, and cooperative reduction compared to the reduction of healthcare cover costs. An effective program that controls and measures internal policies and procedures meaningfully reduces unnecessary quality control. As a result, there is cost reduction, higher quality service, and patient satisfaction.