Business transformation is the hottest buzzword today, with new technologies and management approaches supporting the transformative journey of companies. In order to keep pace with emerging markets and customer needs, businesses are now adopting the managerial technique for quality control, known as Six Sigma. Although it is a management method of problem-solving, it uses a data-driven statistical approach to deliver its goal: deliver near-perfect goods and services for optimal customer satisfaction (CX) and a business edge.
If you are ambitious and want a lucrative career with high-level positions, then why not upskill in lean Six Sigma? It adds value to your IT or MBA background and helps you leverage lean Six Sigma skills in a dynamic environment. Besides, earning a certification in lean Six Sigma is a prerequisite for participation in lean methodologies in any industry, and you cannot just upgrade with job experience.
A lean Six Sigma course is conducted by industry experts and helps you learn the methodologies used in different business settings for improving business processes.
What is Six Sigma
Let us explore what constitutes the Six Sigma approach to business transformation.
Six Sigma is a management method of problem-solving for process improvement and quality control. The etymology has its roots in the Greek symbol “Sigma” or “σ”, which is also the statistical term for measuring process deviation from the process mean or target. The concept thus ensures that no item fails to meet specifications.
It was in 1986 that the American company Motorola devised a new concept of the quality management process. Over time, the approach was refined as a set of principles and methods called “Six Sigma” for business transformation through quality management.
Six Sigma methodologies were firsts initiated in the healthcare sector in October 2001. While manufacturing industries significantly gained from Six Sigma, service industries like healthcare found Six Sigma to be the best strategy to cut costs, increase capacity and improve quality.
As a change management initiative, Six Sigma has emerged as the preferred business model in the customer-facing healthcare industry.
How Six Sigma benefits the Healthcare Industry
Lean Six Sigma has revolutionized the people-intensive healthcare industry by streamlining processes and eliminating manual errors. Most importantly, improving patient care and stakeholder satisfaction.
Lean Six Sigma Approach has made information access easier for patients. Brand reputation is crucial to the healthcare provider, and patient reviews have the potential to make or break the brand value of any hospital.
We look at how Six Sigma processes improved the healthcare sector:
Intercepting and averting mistakes
In the healthcare industry, even minor data errors or manual errors by nurses, technicians, and doctors can considerably impact patient diagnosis and treatment. It can potentially have serious consequences on patient care and affect the brand value of the service provider.
Six Sigma measures operational scenarios by factoring in empirical data and selects the best strategy. The system of assigning ranks to operational processes based on the different levels of errors, with the highest level being ‘Six,’ helps intercept errors where the highest level is not more than 4 in a million observations! Intercepting errors helps to avert serious outcomes involving medical practitioners, biological technology, and infrastructure, ultimately improving patient care.
Six Sigma is only one way that technology is improving the field of clinical research. Check out the infographic below to see the steps in the drug discovery process and other ways it is being improved with technology.
Infographic provided by OmniAb, an antibody discovery platform research organization
Besides, Six Sigma principles help coordinate patient care and processes for better documentation of healthcare and faulty points that may put patients in danger.
Improving Patient Care
In healthcare, the patients are the customers. Thus ensuring patient care improves the customer satisfaction index, a principle of the Six Sigma methodology. Implementation of the Six Sigma technique in the healthcare industry is found to change the perspective of healthcare workers, who begin considering patients as their customers whose satisfaction is paramount.
With the Six Sigma goals aimed at consistency and improvement in the delivery of quality healthcare, service providers implement measures such as 24×7 emergency care facilities, wheelchair access, in-house pharmacy, and so on. Pre-existing processes and resources are revisited using lean Six Sigma methodologies to improve the quality of healthcare services.
Increasing access to quality healthcare services
Lean Six Sigma methods applied to existing processes in healthcare systems help identify waste and redundant processes to cut costs, thereby ensuring cheaper healthcare services. Operational analysis through lean theories detects procedures that do not add value to the service, helping reduce wastage for higher ROI and more affordable healthcare services.
For instance, identifying where excess staff is deployed during non-peak hours, partnering with doctors who are experts in particular fields of medicine and surgery, conducting specialized surgical camps, and so on, to provide access to quality healthcare services across all sections of society.
Reducing patient wait times
Many healthcare providers face issues with crowded OPD rooms with high wait times, even during emergencies. Patients sometimes wait for hours despite prior appointments, overcrowding waiting areas and often distressing the staff trying to cope with the patient overflow.
Walk-in patients often have to wait a couple of hours to see a doctor and receive treatment despite emergencies. But by applying Six Sigma techniques, healthcare providers can determine how patients progress through different points of the waiting period, analyze the bottlenecks and assess whether the variation is at the end of the physician, appointments section, or staff duty and batching charts.
Six Sigma techniques identify delays caused by inefficient processes, thus decreasing wait times by as much as 37% in emergency departments.
Reducing the lengths of hospital stays
The Six Sigma methodology helps healthcare providers facilitate better patient care, which means cutting the lengths of stay. Patient treatment is significantly better, wastage is eliminated, and the treatment period is shortened, thus lowering patients’ stays in the hospital, and lessening the burden on healthcare systems.
Other real-life applications in healthcare where Six Sigma offers benefits include:
- Purchase and Supply Chain
- Clinical Research
- Billing and Coding
- Laboratory Efficiency
- Maintenance
- Transcription
As the healthcare sector seeks to boost its brand image for a bigger slice of the business, its focus on improving the quality and cost of patient care is well served with Six Sigma methodologies.
Bottom Line
Implementing lean Six Sigma across multiple departments helps to analyze, devise appropriate action plans and deliver the goals of superior and affordable patient care and services. Any tool or strategy used by a lean Six Sigma professional works towards the common goal of patient (customer) satisfaction.
With Six Sigma a hot domain, you may like to consider upskilling in this lean methodology. Enhance your career prospects and salary gains in the fast-paced healthcare sector with a certification in Six Sigma, beginning with a Green Belt. Work your way up to higher Belt levels as you gain work and project experience implementing Six Sigma techniques for better healthcare systems.
