Abstract
Quality of care has become a focal point in healthcare. Hospitals and health systems continue to produce care that varies in quality. This leads to customer dissatisfaction as well as inefficient processes and output. As a result, administrators face a challenge to improve the quality of care in their organizations.
One way to address quality improvement is to use various quality management models. Six Sigma is an innovative program that uses data analysis to achieve defect-free processes and to decrease variation. The program can provide management with a viable solution to quality improvement. Six Sigma is one of the traditional quality programs. Some hospital executives are turning to Six Sigma, the statistical quality method made famous by Motorola and General Motors, to improve their quality performance, increase patient satisfaction and lower costs.
Although not widely applied in health care, Six Sigma can significantly improve patient case management, patient satisfaction and business processes, and reduce medical errors, proponents say. Six Sigma has done more than demonstrate improvements in quality; it fundamentally has changed the way healthcare executives view their business. Indeed, when a quality improvement initiative truly has impacted the entire organization as it did at Commonwealth, the payoff is everywhere you look.
Six Sigma provides both the framework and methods to "get better faster," a combination of statistical tools and project-management techniques that enable managers to clearly define problems, measure and analyze them, and reach sustainable improvements in practice. Six Sigma recognizes that "variation is the enemy of best practices," and it targets excessive variation and waste within the system to achieve its intended goal of reducing defects, improving profits and delighting customers. It has been credited with saving billions of dollars in the manufacturing sector, among such heavyweights as General Electric, Motorola, Honeywell and Allied Signal. Most Six......
