4 Benefits of Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare

​Lean Six Sigma, since its inception has been used successfully in the corporate world as well as the business environment. Lean strategy has been used to streamline production processes and reduce waste. However, when it comes to the Healthcare Industry, application of Lean Six Sigma is a little different. 

It requires an understanding of how Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies can be implemented in people intensive processes. ​

The understanding of Lean Six Sigma might be different in healthcare, but its implementation is still quite beneficial. We look at how Lean Six Sigma processes improve the working of the healthcare sector.

​1. Preventing Medical Mistakes

One of the principle aims of Six Sigma program is to reduce errors in a process. Therefore, it is especially relevant for healthcare businesses, where mistakes could have serious health consequences. Lean Six Sigma ranks an operational process on different levels depending on the errors that it makes. To achieve its highest level of ‘Six’, an operation can make no more than 4 errors in a million observations.  
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Lean Six Sigma takes into account empirical data and can measure different operational scenarios. Out of which the best strategy can be chosen. A strategy which aligns the different agents involved such as medical practitioners, biological technology and the infrastructure, and makes the least number of errors can then be selected. 

​2. Improving Patient Care

Another important feature of Lean Six Sigma is its focus on customer needs; which in the case of the healthcare sector would mean improvement in patients care. Lean Six Sigma helps put a customer perspective on its operations.
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There are several features that are increasingly becoming part of the healthcare process because of this change in the focus. Examples would include: wheelchair access to hospital’s different buildings and 24x7 emergency care facilities. And since Lean Six Sigma aims for constant progress in quality, healthcare service-providers that implement it can constantly improve their patient care.

​3. Increasing Accessibility to Healthcare

Lean Six Sigma management helps reduce waste in a process which further helps to bring down costs. Analysis of operations through lean theories allows detection of actions and procedures that do not add value to the service provided. Wastage such as over purchase of health inventory or over employment of staff during non-peak hours can be eliminated.
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Reduction of cost through prevention of wastage is not only sensible from business perspective but it also makes Healthcare cheaper and accessible to a larger population.

​4. Lessening Lengths of Stay

Through a reduction in wastage as discussed above, a greater focus on the needs of patients and an increase in the quality of care offered. Healthcare firms and organizations would be able to reduce the lengths of stay for the patients. This again is a vital business aim as well as an important social responsibility.  

If you wish to learn more about the system of Lean Six Sigma, please check out LearningManager Lean Six Sigma.