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Pharmacy Department Sees Big Benefits from Lean Six Sigma
The in-house pharmacy department at the University of North Carolina Hospitals recently turned to Lean Six Sigma as a way to improve workflow and increase customer satisfaction among patients and nurses, according to a report from Pharmacy Times. The department not only achieved those objectives, but also found a reduction in errors, less clutter, and…
Lean Six Sigma Project Leads Texas City to Opt for In-House Paratransit
A Lean Six Sigma project in Tyler, Texas, has lead the city to opt for providing in-house paratransit services rather than contracting that service out to a private company. According to an article in the Tyler Morning Telegraph, the city began its analysis in January and included a customer survey about the city’s paratransit services…
Healthcare Consultant Says Lean Six Sigma is Crucial to Delivery System
The purpose behind healthcare delivery, according to healthcare business consultant Austin Kirkland, is to eliminate under-performers for the good of value-based medicine. And the way to prevent your practice from being one of the under-performers? Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma, when applied to the healthcare revenue cycle, Kirkland wrote in a recent article for…
Lean Strategies Save a New Hampshire Hospital from Financial Ruin
According to an article on the blog FierceHealthcare, the 2009 ice storm that hit the state of New Hampshire created a crisis for the Monadnock Community Hospital. As a result the 25-bed critical access hospital faced a huge deficit. “I had to pull a rabbit out of a hat,” recalled hospital President and CEO Peter…
Lean Six Sigma and Information Technology Benefits Health Care System
The Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System of central Illinois is praising the practices of Lean Six Sigma and the role that information technology has played in implementing those practices for saving hundreds thousands of dollars over the past two years. According to an article from HealthLeaders Media, the regional health care organization is requiring all directors managers and supervisors…
Lean Six Sigma Helps VA Reduce Length of Stay
A recent study by the Veteran’s Administration showed a significant improvement in the length of stay for total joint replacement patients. “The [Joint Replacement Program] JRP demonstrates that [Lean Six Sigma] LSS process methods can be used to improve patient care efficiency, substantially enhancing outcomes while reducing costs in a [Veterans Affairs] VA facility’s orthopedic surgery…
cGMP and Continuous Improvement
A student in my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt course who works in the pharmaceutical industry was concerned that improvement methodologies such as Lean and Kaizen conflicted with the Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) established by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA.) However, there is no conflict between cGMPs and Lean, Six Sigma or any…
Lean Six Sigma and Patient-Centered Healthcare
With the arrival of the Accountable Care Organization and the Patient-Centered Medical Home, physicians face a new challenge. They must assess how they provide healthcare in such a way that they become more valuable to patients, efficient in their clinical practices, and effective to their bottom line. Enter Lean Six Sigma, which has gotten some…
Lean Six Sigma in Hospitals Help Patients Receive Faster Care
In the October 2012 Hospital Impact blog, “Lean Six Sigma and the patient experience,” writer Anthony Cirillo noted that recent reports showed that Lean and Six Sigma efforts reduce costs and improve efficiency. Some reports even praised the models for enhancing employee satisfaction and collaborative problem solving. The question Cirillo raised, however, is whether Lean…
Hospital Payments Linked to Quality of Outcomes
It has long been recognized that the incentives in the healthcare system are perverse in the sense that hospitals receive compensation for what is essentially rework. For example, a patient might be admitted and treated for an ailment, released, then subsequently readmitted for the same ailment. Another common occurrence is that patients acquire a problem…