Improving Patient Care: What Is Six Sigma in Healthcare?

Medical practitioners constantly seek to improve patient outcomes at their medical centers. Implementing the Six Sigma methodology in healthcare while trying to maximize patient care results can be challenging. One effective option is implementing Six Sigma in healthcare, which seeks efficiency improvements without sacrificing what’s best for the patient.

Weave offers multiple software solutions to help you use these lean processes initially and then keep improving on them.

Understanding Six Sigma in Healthcare

Although Six Sigma started as a philosophy to improve outcomes in the manufacturing and business worlds, the healthcare industry now regularly puts its theories into practice with demonstrable results.

What Is Six Sigma in Healthcare?

Six Sigma is a lean method that attempts to improve quality and efficiency in the multiple processes required for business management. It reduces errors, eliminates waste, and improves efficiency.

Ultimately, Six Sigma focuses on using data to reduce defects and variations in the interest of streamlining operations.

Importance of Six Sigma in Healthcare

When using Six Sigma in a healthcare organization, you need to focus on compassion and the human touch compared to, for example, what occurs with Six Sigma in manufacturing. You want to improve your processes and eliminate defects, but you don’t want to sacrifice your personal attention to each patient. 

Deploying Six Sigma in the healthcare industry seeks to deliver the balance of improving healthcare outcomes with maximum efficiency.

Core Principles of Six Sigma in Healthcare

When deploying Six Sigma, healthcare professionals will want to combine DMAIC with lean philosophies.

DMAIC Method

DMAIC is an acronym for the key points of the Six Sigma method: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.

Define

Start by defining the goals for growing your medical practice through the deployment of Six Sigma in healthcare. Perhaps you want to reduce patient waiting time or allow your employees to spend more time helping patients with serious health consequences. Whatever your goals, Six Sigma can help you reach them through proper implementation.

Measure

Six Sigma requires accurate data measurements about your medical facility’s service level. While exposing weak points might feel awkward at first, it also allows you to identify areas with good performance and bottlenecks. You can then treat these as models for what works in your efforts to make up for losses elsewhere.

Analyze

Once employees have the data, they can begin analyzing the root causes of the inefficiencies. This will make your team feel more invested in your organization and more willing to help it thrive.

Improve

Once the root causes are identified, your staff members can work together to develop and implement solutions that reduce the issues, thus creating greater camaraderie and mutual support that you can always fall back on whenever future conflicts arise.

Control

With the new solutions in place, measure and monitor their performance. If any solutions need tweaking, you can use the measurement data you continue to track to implement modifications.

Lean Integration

A common option in several healthcare organizations is to combine principles found in lean healthcare services with Six Sigma. Lean focuses on waste reduction, which pairs well with Six Sigma’s data-driven approach to improving efficiency.

Deploying the Lean Six Sigma process can eliminate unnecessary steps in patient care for healthcare practitioners while improving the quality of care. 

Benefits of Six Sigma in Healthcare

By implementing Six Sigma principles wholeheartedly, you’ll improve patient care and reduce service costs of operation.

Improving Patient Safety and Care

In a healthcare services facility, patient care and safety must be at the forefront of any operational changes. Implementing Six Sigma often increases patient satisfaction and protection in the following ways:

• Streamlining insurance claims and digitizing all your records will reduce major and minor data errors.
• By reducing medical errors and making staff members more efficient, you’ll improve patient care outcomes and achieve clinical excellence.
• Patients will notice your staff’s quality improvement steps, increasing overall satisfaction and leading to positive online reviews from more patients.

Operational Efficiency

Operational efficiency benefits found with Lean Six Sigma methods show up in numerous ways, such as the following:

• By streamlining administrative processes, your staff members can spend more time with patients.
• A more efficient emergency care unit reduces patient waiting time before the exam begins and lab turnaround times afterward.
• Improving efficiency at the medical facility leads to fewer errors and eliminates waste.

Cost Reduction

You reduce operation costs by making all staff members more efficient and reducing waste in the supply chain resources you’re using. You don’t spend as much on supplies by eliminating unnecessary tasks that cause wasted resources. Ultimately, healthcare providers cut unnecessary expenses using Lean Six Sigma methods.

Implementing Six Sigma in Healthcare

Once you decide to start using Six Sigma healthcare services, you must take a few different steps. We’ll walk you through them below.

Training and Certification

Healthcare providers may offer self-paced, accredited Six Sigma certification to implement these processes and boost career opportunities within the facility. The Lean Six Sigma certification process has five levels for Six Sigma professionals. These are as follows:

• White Belt: White Belts support Six Sigma in healthcare projects but don’t serve directly on project teams.
• Yellow Belt: Yellow Belts participate on project teams with the role of reviewing process improvement ideas.
• Green Belt: Green Belts can run their own improvement projects or perform data collection and analysis for Black Belt projects.
• Black Belt: Black Belts train and coach project management teams while leading problem-solving projects.
• Master Black Belt: Master Black Belts provide strategic direction for the overall Six Sigma project at the facility.

Building a Six Sigma Team

When you are ready to build your Six Sigma healthcare method oversight team, seek a group of people from different segments of the medical business. They should agree on the project goals and have a shared commitment to achieving them.

Identifying Projects

When determining which projects you’d like to use with your Lean Six Sigma program, start with those areas that have the best chance of making a significant difference. To increase patient satisfaction levels, you’ll want to start by improving patient flow, increasing patient treating capacity, and streamlining patient record keeping.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Maintaining a successful Six Sigma program in the healthcare industry requires constant data monitoring and performance tracking. Before making significant changes, you’ll want to implement the right processes to help with data tracking.

Challenges and Solutions in Six Sigma in Healthcare

Although it would be easier if any changes in operations at your medical clinic automatically worked as planned with full buy-in, this rarely is the case. Sometimes, you’re going to encounter challenges and problems that need solving.

Common Challenges

The following are some of the biggest challenges healthcare sector facilities encounter when deploying Six Sigma in healthcare:

• Resistance to Change: Sometimes, staff members may be reluctant to embrace this type of lean quality management philosophy. Even if your staff buys in initially, it may resist the idea of using measurements to seek continuous quality improvement. 
• Data Management: You need accurate data measurements to implement lean Six Sigma processes that will lead to the desired outcomes. Data collection and analysis must also be correct.
• Resource Allocation: During implementation, facilities must balance allocating resources to the Six Sigma processes and day-to-day operations.

Solutions and Best Practices

How do you overcome some of the resistance to implementing the Six Sigma method? Multiple best practices are available to achieve a better outcome, including:

• Leadership Support: It is vital to a successful implementation that your management leaders are on board with the initiatives related to Six Sigma in healthcare.
• Staff Engagement: Explain to your frontline employees that these initiatives allow them to play a key role in improving the clinic’s performance for themselves and for patients.
• Continuous Training: Employees need a training process that allows them to understand the Six Sigma method through real-world examples and how to implement it successfully.

Weave’s Solutions for Running a Lean Healthcare Practice

With a partner like Weave helping you, implementing lean Six Sigma methods becomes a far easier process.

Look to Weave’s products and solutions to aid in bringing a lean philosophy that has a track record of success with healthcare organizations. Here are some of the ways Weave can help:

• Streamlined Communications: Our Lean Six Sigma tools include appointment reminder cards, text messages, and emails that help to reduce no-shows at appointments. We also provide digital forms that allow patients to fill out their contact information and health history before they even arrive at the office.
• Efficient Scheduling: Your clinic’s website can allow patients to set up their own appointments, saving time and data entry for your staff. Patients can see in real-time where you have availability in your schedule and find a slot that works for them. This digital transformation takes a fraction of the time to find a compatible window in the schedule over a voice call.
• Data Management: By reducing paper in your medical office and storing data digitally, multiple people can access the information through workstations. Digital data backups protect data far better than paper copies. Ultimately, digital data improves patient flow and reduces administrative burdens.

Trust Weave As Your Partner for Lean Healthcare Solutions

Healthcare industry organizations looking to improve patient care and reduce inefficiencies can benefit from embracing lean processes. Such philosophies encourage employees and managers to work together to make changes that improve your clinic’s performance when they notice problems.

Having software and other digital processes that simplify spotting and fixing problems is key to your success. To learn more about Six Sigma healthcare sector improvements and how our services can help make them happen, contact Weave today for a free demo.

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