Lean Six Sigma is often thought to be only applicable to industries, businesses and companies. But in fact, this method can be used by many organizations including health care. This isn’t a magic pill that can make solutions to every problem, however, with substantial amount of time in training and education, Lean Six Sigma can be very effective.
The people and the organization will require them to fully commit to the course before using such strategy. Management group is often the first to use Lean Six Sigma. The management will have to support the project so as to not waste time and effort. There have been studies that revealed that hindrances when it comes to leadership commitment are the most important factors that contribute to the Lean Six Sigma programs not working.
In Lean projects, it is the manager’s role to be the one who is encouraging, noticeable and able to lead the organization. In the use of this method, leaders will need to be the ones who can move changes through their actions in alignment with the mission of the health care organization. A critical tool used in Lean Six Sigma is through ascertaining state and to determine the future of that state.
Lean six sigma applications in healthcare industry have several approaches that are used in synergy with one another.
Strategic deployment approach is where the senior executive does the strategic planning such as quality, expense reduction, physician and patient satisfaction. Mapping system that illustrates the relationship among all the major processes and entities is also done through the deployment of Lean Six Sigma.
Statistic calculation approach involves the categorization of quality and the usage of statistics to ascertain proof of the existence of the problem and in order to see which needs to be improved upon. Costs to can be differentiated according to the quality of costs, process costs and costs to poor quality.
Organizational cultural change approach focuses on the improvement of culture in terms of the status quo. This is a vast improvement from performance bench-marking. This enables the transformation of the organization’s culture in order to strive for perfection and improvement around the organization.
Project managerial approach allows the organization to utilize framework and tools to fast track implementation of project management, DMAIC, PDCA and one hundred day rapid change response team. For more info click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Six_Sigma.
