Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has gained prominence in recent years as a corporate improvement method in a variety of industries, including healthcare. LSS seeks to increase quality, speed, and customer satisfaction while decreasing waste and process variance. The combination of Lean and Six Sigma helps firms to address the underlying causes of process flow and waste issues while also ensuring statistical control and process acceleration.
The effective application of LSS in healthcare organisations has resulted in a slew of advantages, including improved patient safety, higher patient satisfaction, cost savings, and improved team chemistry. LSS application, for example, has reduced patient waiting time throughout the registration process, turnaround time in the medical records department, and prescription errors. These findings have resulted in considerable improvements in patient safety, care quality, and overall organisational performance.
Notwithstanding the same implementation challenges as other industries, the healthcare sector has shown encouraging results through the use of LSS.
The reduction of medication errors is one example of successful LSS implementation in healthcare. A evaluation of four case studies on the use of LSS to reduce medication errors discovered that LSS improved patient safety, increased patient satisfaction, reduced costs, and improved team interactions. The DMAIC structure, a major aspect of LSS that focuses on defining, measuring, analysing, improving, and controlling processes, was used to do this.
Another example of LSS application in healthcare is the lowering of patient registration wait time. LSS was utilised to identify and remove non-value-added steps in the registration process, resulting in 37% less waiting time. The successful application of LSS in the registration process improves not just the quality of care but also patient satisfaction.
Additionally, LSS has been used in the healthcare sector to speed up the medical records department’s turnaround time. LSS led to a 46% reduction in turnaround time by identifying and reducing waste in the process, resulting in greater efficiency and production.
To summarise, LSS is a powerful tool for improving healthcare operations, resulting in increased patient safety, higher patient satisfaction, cost savings, and improved team interactions. The combination of Lean and Six Sigma enables firms to address the underlying causes of process flow and waste issues while maintaining statistical control and process acceleration. LSS has shown positive results after effective adoption in healthcare organisations, making it a viable method to healthcare improvement.
