As healthcare is people intensive and process driven industry so this is the perfect environment for lean and six sigma. Lean six sigma is not just a methodology or not just having tools that are needed to make an improvement but it is having mentality and psychology to make change happen. Lean and Six Sigma have a combine relationship with each other in improving the quality of services by reducing costs and wastes and gives a good result in healthcare improvement. ĭay to day rising in cost of healthcare and decrease in reimbursement rates what can hospitals do to ensure operational efficiencies, quality patient safety, and employee engagement while still meeting the bottom line. The concept of lean and six sigma is a little easier to understand then to implement. This is one of the reasons that most lean six sigma activity begin with lean, as qualitative tools are little more intuitive. When taking a lean approach, the general focus is on the qualitative tools. Lean in manufacturing was introduced by James Womack who works at the lean institute. It became more extensively recognized as a solution that works. Later on, Kiichiro Toyota implemented new concepts, like they came up with things like value stream and Kanban, which become to known as Toyota production system in the 90 s. Henry Ford kind of established it early on the first mass production system by combining standard parts conveyors and workflow. But today it’s used in the public sector, in customer service, in healthcare and can be used everywhere. We know that lean and six sigma both sort of originated out of manufacturing, a lot of it from manufacturing of automotive. Both of them, at the end of the day deliver the same kind of value to the customer and to the businesses. Principles of six sigma and lean have a lot of similarities, and that’s why lean and six sigma has been practiced together. Combination of lean and six sigma also gives good results in improving the process flow. First lean methodology is used to eliminates the waste then through six sigma tools we can improve process variation so these two methods go hand in hand in today’s time. Therefore, to improve the efficiency and quality of the process combining these philosophies will eliminate waste and reduce variability. It is well known that six sigma stands for standard deviation. Lean is famous for its ability to handle waste and Six sigma is known for process improvement. Lean Six Sigma combines the strategies of Lean and Six sigma. There are plenty of opportunities for improvement in healthcare. They not only prevent deaths but also improve the quality of patient care and reduce operating costs. A healthcare practitioner who understands how to use the tools and methodology to systematically resolve problems and improve the quality of care is well-positioned to become a highly valued asset to their organization. Lean Six Sigma can go in a long way in reducing these devastating preventable deaths. While in 2008 that figure had ballooned to 200 thousand deaths a year, that’s five hundred and forty-eight deaths a day or 1 death almost every two minutes in the US alone. The Institute of Medicine in 1998 estimated that 98 thousand deaths could have been prevented that year due to medical errors. According to the journal of healthcare finance, medical errors cost the US over nineteen point five billion dollars in 2008. Simple mistakes can impact hundreds of people and can lead to fatalities. There is little room for error when it comes to healthcare. There is a need for guiding healthcare professionals on creating a continuous improvement environment, which sustains the improvements achieved after LSS implementation. But it was observed that the studies in these nations were majorly empirical in nature, very few studies were conceptual or exploratory. Moreover, lesser number of studies were being conducted for developing nations, but now it seems that the focus of research scholars has shifted towards the developing nations also. It was found that comparatively less studies are focused on improving the medical processes, most of the studies targeted the management processes. The present study systematically reviews the research studies conducted on LSS in the healthcare sector. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a methodology which when implemented in an organization, helps to increase the process capability and the efficiency, by reducing the defects and wastes. Especially in the developing nations, the problems were much bigger. During the novel corona virus pandemic, it was evident that our healthcare organizations still lack in terms of efficiency and productivity. Healthcare is a very important sector as our lives depend on it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |