Six Sigma

Six Sigma Healthcare

Healthcare sector is responsible for delivering what can be called as Life-saving solutions or services. A company providing healthcare services may decide that it wishes to implement Six Sigma approach to improve the quality and the speed with which the services are delivered. Though a very good idea by thought, the issue that healthcare provider must grapple with the idea of the metric to choose for a Six Sigma process improvement which could adjust to the statistical control mechanism of Six Sigma.

Which processes can a healthcare provider improve by Six Sigma Approach?

Healthcare providers in the United States of America provide a whole range of services ranging from patient treatment to billing. While some functions like maintenance of Intensive Care Unit can be extremely difficult to scope and manage, the same can be redefined as managing ICU Protocols which can be used as a tremendous aim to increase customer satisfaction.

Some guidelines for a healthcare service provider must pay attention to before having a Six Sigma approach for opportunities

Much the same way how any company in service sectors may identify opportunities, healthcare sector is no different. With the services offered by healthcare provider having an exhaustive back - end approach, metrics which can be improved are easily identified. Some points which the healthcare provider must consider before taking up a Six Sigma approach for opportunities are as follows:

• Customer Satisfaction should be the target - This should be the primary metric which providers must to look at achieving out of the Six Sigma process improvement plan. As it is primarily in the service sector, any opportunity which is targeted at anything else than customer satisfaction may not meet with the success which was expected.
  
  
• What is the people involvement in the project? - We all know that an Six Sigma project can achieve its objectives only if the entire team is involved in the project. With healthcare service providers, adequate thought must be given to the fact that lot of employees of the organization may be involved with mission critical duties and may not even have the time to get involved with the execution of a Six Sigma project.
  
  
• Data Security and Confidentiality - A hospital database is a warehouse of confidential information of patients like Patient medical records etc. While a Six Sigma project prides itself in the exhaustiveness of the presence of data, enough precaution must be taken that the Data Confidentiality aspect of the customers is not tampered with.

With a good understanding of the CTQ (Critical to Quality) factors of the process improvement, healthcare companies can definitely improve customer satisfaction levels by taking a Six Sigma Healthcare approach.