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The Institute of Cost Accountants of India



Six Sigma approach to improve quality

and proftability in Healthcare Industry




Backdrop: waiting time, the patient appointment
scheduling to be designed and patient
The challenge for health care industry waiting line system to be collected. If
to beneft from the use of Six Sigma is the level of performance goes below
paramount. Patient care signifcantly the lower limit of expected performance
involves human element as compared level, then root causes of the problem to
to machine elements, in which the be analyzed and solved accordingly. In
variability is restrained and very diffcult addition to increasing patient satisfaction,
to enumerate. Success will come only Six Sigma can be used in other areas of
when the Six Sigma technical strategy healthcare such as reducing medication
is combined with a cultural strategy mistakes, reducing diagnostic laboratory
to change acceleration and a sound errors, and capability studies and
operational mechanism. improvement of various medical and
surgical procedures.
Objectives:
Applicability:
► Goal of sustainability for the or-
ganization, patients and the society Six Sigma is relatively new to the healthcare
► Streamline operations to minimize industry so there are more opportunities
waste and reduce costs that can be explored. Patients or
► Improve safeguards that protect prospective patients could be used as
patient service and reputation team members on Six Sigma projects. it
may also be applied to the triage process
► Optimize proftability without com- in emergency rooms. It can also be used
promising quality of care to decrease the time patients spend in
the emergency room by getting patients
Methodology: admitted to hospital rooms or discharged
quicker. Hospital laboratories are another
The goal and scope of the project is to area of healthcare that could beneft
be determined frst. Then a performance from Six Sigma. Six Sigma can also be
baseline to be created to compare used to optimize the scheduling of time
data evidencing errors against which for the testing equipment such as MRI
performance can be measured for machines and the resources to operate
patient waiting time, determine average this equipment. Scheduling can be done
waiting time expected by average in such a way those patients most in need
patient, and its upper and lower limit. of the services can be scheduled giving
Continuous, monitoring of performance is higher priority. This approach can also be
required and performance related data used for designing new hospital facilities
using patient satisfaction survey, and for and also remodeling existing ones.

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