How To Use Six Sigma In Healthcare

How To Use Six Sigma In Healthcare

While a lot of companies use Six Sigma, the truth is that it is a challenging strategy to use. The reality is that Six Sigma can be used in all industries. However, many people wonder how it can be used in healthcare.
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Six Sigma In Healthcare

There are many factors that affect the use of Six Sigma in healthcare. After all, just think about the lack of funds, the different professional groups, the overworked and understaffed employees, not to mention all the procedures that are incredibly difficult to be controlled or managed. Nevertheless, the reality is that the employment of Six Sigma in healthcare is worth every penny. After all, the main goal would be to deliver the best care to more people at the lowest cost possible.

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When we are talking about the healthcare industry, you need to talk about more than just doctors and nurses. You need to remember that there are other professionals involved as well as other areas of the healthcare industry. These include pharmacies, medical supplies, laundry, ORs, radiology departments, the labs, among many others. So, as you can see, the healthcare industry is a very complex network of interdependent and interconnected processes that can make the implementation of Six Sigma a bit harder.


One of the things that you need to understand is that the healthcare industry in the US is striving for a change. And there are many different factors pointing in that direction. Here are some of these factors:

• The shortage of staffing has been increasing, especially nurses. While there shouldn't be any problem with physicians, nurses are still needed.
• The low financing is also a problem. Even though the government has been trying to make changes, the truth is that we can say that the budget for the healthcare industry has no clear limits.
• Baby boomers are aging and with them comes a higher demand from the industry.
• Litigation continues to increase year after year. ​

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So, how can we use Six Sigma in healthcare?

Overall, Six Sigma is a methodology that intends to improve and manage all the processes so they can be more efficient and less costly. The truth is that when businesses are able to perform better, they have faster turnaround times, lower costs and fewer errors.

However, when we are looking into the healthcare industry, we can't only consider the decrease in the costs or the increase of the efficiency. We also need to consider that the use of Six Sigma in healthcare would have other benefits:

• By using this methodology, the senior management would be able to finally quantify and measure the different processes such as purchasing sutures, filing claims, registering patients, or even transplanting organs

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• Six Sigma could help with a unification of the different processes used by the different physicians. The truth is that if this situation continued, Six Sigma wouldn't be able to evaluate and compare the different data. However, with the uniformization, Six Sigma would be able to identify the best practices as well as it would be able to manage all the required changes.
  
• There is also the need to be a higher consolidation of hospital chains. The truth is that some hospitals just don't want to give up on all their power (especially the boards). However, with a consolidation of hospitals, we could then implement the same accounting system which would allow Six Sigma to look at the different organizational units and compare them.