Application Of Six Sigma Tools Essay

The driving factors for a success or failure of implementing Six Sigma is largely dependent on the inputs set forth at the conception and duration of the integration. This whitepaper will compare and contrast these critical inputs for a successful deployment. In order to accomplish this five various companies: GE Electric, W.R. Grace, Royal Chemicals, Diversified Paper and Lemforder. Some of these organizations had very successful results while others failed to reach their full potential. What is clear is the similarities of those that succeed and those that failed.

There is a new trend in the health care provider market and the hospital has not stand ahead or abreast of the new trend. Today, it is estimated that 6,400 urgent care centers have been established nationwide (Ferenc & Stempniak, 2015). The American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine reports a higher number, 9,300 urgent care clinics estimation (Ferenc & Stempniak, 2015). Those numbers will grow. It is predicted that the “$14.5 billion urgent care industry will increase by 5.8 percent annually through 2018 to about $18.8 billion” (Ferenc & Stempniak, 2015, p.7). With numbers like that, it benefits the hospital to readjust its delivery of health services to look heavily at the new trend practices. The leaders failed to conduct a market and financial analysis. This may cause the hospital to loose its viability as a competitor. As a result, the hospital cannot identify market trends to stay ahead of the trends and be prepared to meet challenges that come along with those trends. In addition, it has failed to conduct a financial analysis to assess if it is profitable to implement new strategies to meet the market

Moreno Medical Center (MMC) is a physician-owned full-service acute care hospital that has been around since 1975 (University of Phoenix, 2016). They recently experienced changes in payment with managed care, so they started looking closer at the processes and patient satisfaction with their current procedures (University of Phoenix, 2016). Currently, patient experience in the outpatient surgical clinic is low due to long delays throughout the admission and discharge processes (MMC issues, 2016). They hired a consultant to work with the surgical department on the issues that are apparent within the department to help to improve the satisfaction of the patients that the department serves (MMC issues, 2016). Today, we are going to take a closer look at MMC’s characteristics, organizational structure, social, and cultural aspects and they impact patient satisfactions and outcomes. We will also take a look at the responsibilities of the leaders of the organization, delegation, and staffing, and performance evaluations could impact patient satisfaction in the future.

The advantages of these changes are better quality of care, increased reimbursement, and improved patient satisfaction. The willingness of this organization to make improvements placed them in a position to be prepared for value based purchasing. The disadvantages of creating a culture of innovation is that it can sometimes be costly. As this article points out, there was significant initial outlay of capital required to make this Innovacion happen. The end result was that the hosptial ultimatley received a good return on their investment.

Memorial Hospital (MH) is a 349-bed regional and referral center that is challenged by nearly 100% occupancy rate by its inpatient operating room patients. Surgical growth is expected to increase due to an increase in population and aging in its primary service area. This challenge is a major concern for the leadership of the hospital due to the significant outmigration of surgical cases and reports of poor patient satisfaction. Memorial Hospital has requested a team of staff members from their financial and planning offices to develop a strategic approach to expand their surgical capacity and to improve patient satisfaction. The draft proposal calls for a two-phase capital project intended to increase operating room capacity, address technology limitations, and improve patient satisfaction.

HCA’s commitments to improving and caring for the human life as well as their struggles towards delivering cost-effective and high-quality health care across America makes the hospital the largest in the nation. According to B. Herman, “Hospital Corporation of America is one of the largest for-profit healthcare providers in the world, and it plays an especially large role in the United States” (2014, para. 1). The hospital continues to build on their foundation that is greatly attributed to their values and mission, in which their primary focus is prioritizing the patients’ needs and services to improve the care the patients receive. Some of the approaches HCA uses to build on the foundation is by implementing strategic measures that offer support to their caregivers, providing the highest possible quality, and ensuring patient safety. The hospital’s management values investing in the community, an approach that has created a good reputation of HCA among different American societies. Further, HCA spends approximately $1.5 billion yearly towards keeping their facilities updated and modern. This is the key to successful operations that heavily rely on the ever-evolving technology. This paper explores the strategic planning analysis of HCA, in which it addresses the competitive analysis; internal and external assessments; competencies and resource; and the current and future direction of HCA.

Resource utilization is an important aspect in managing today’s healthcare world and resources in healthcare are limited, especially when it pertains to surgeries. It is vital for healthcare organizations to efficiently distribute resources while also not letting resources be wasted, these efforts do cost time and money. High performing, highly productive organizations can offer competitive edges against other organizations, however, organizations must strategically plan how this occurs. According to Sokal, Craft, Change, Sandberg & Berger (2006) the increase in the number of patients needing surgery, reduced number of operating rooms and staff shortage are reasons why surgeries and operating rooms are under capacity limitations. This paper will evaluate the operational strategy that was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital on maximizing the utilization of the operating and recovery rooms.

The major test and prospects for today’s complicated healthcare delivery systems require that leaders take charge of their operations. A strong operations focus can reduce costs, increase safety, improve clinical and non-clinical outcomes, and allow an organization to compete effectively with an uncompromising market (McLaughlin & Hays, 2008).

Operating a business can be extremely challenging. It requires realistic goals managed by qualified people with a well thought-out strategy. Managing a surgery department, also known as a perioperative services department, is no different from any other profession. The author of this paper has managed a perioperative services department for many years and has been a part of its success. The Perioperative Services Department is successful because of a clearly stated mission statement, a well thought out organizational strategy, a good motivational leadership approach and staff who are committed to the culture of excellence always.

A major reason for performance improvement project failures is the misinterpretation of an ongoing performance program. Prioritizing performance efforts would help an organization achieve early quality improvement goals and maintain adequate momentum for future QI initiatives. An organization should follow six step approach model for implementing and monitoring a quality improvement program. First step of a six step quality improvement program model should line up improvement initiatives with the facility’s quality improvement program strategic objectives. Health care component relationship interaction is simultaneously affected and changed by the health care organization’s operational process systems. Due to the simultaneous change and impact of process components, it is very important for any ongoing performance improvement model to lineup parallel to the health care organizations strategic objectives. A health care facility’s objectives can take many forms and priorities. Federal or state accreditation and or developing a new medical wing or process are examples of an organization’s strategic objectives. In order for a quality improvement initiative to be successful, the QI initiative must lineup with the facilities strategic initiatives to obtain some form of accreditation or develop a new specialty department or health care process.

The concept of Six Sigma was developed in the early 1980’s at Motorola Corporation (Harry and Schroeder, 2000). Six Sigma can be defined as a statistical measure of the performance of a process or product (Kumi et. al., 2006). It is used as a quality control mechanism, which seeks to reduce defects or variations in a process to 3.4 per million opportunities thereby optimizing output and increasing customer satisfaction (Sambhe, 2012). Sigma is representing the standard deviation, a unit of measurement that designates the distribution or spread about the mean of a process (Six Sigma Academy, 2002). In addition, the Six Sigma uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of fact, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing improving, and reinventing business processes (Pande, P., et. al. 2000). The Six Sigma methodology uses statistical tools to identify the factors that matter most for improving the quality of processes and generating bottom-line results. The Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure,

ABC hospital has/had been having numerous issues within the hospital along with the issues related to the hospitals’ processes. Some of the hospitals situations included: excessive wait times, excessive delays in care, elopements, patient falls, excessive costs, decrease patient satisfaction, and not being able to prioritize their patients appropriately nor accessing the situation effectively for the patients needing services (Nash, Grandon, Grandon, & Goldfarb, 2006). After ABC’s hospital executives evaluated the situations that the organization has been facing, they embarked on a nine month journey; in order to investigate completely all the situations that arose as well as developed action plans and changes in the hospital to alleviate these situations. The following report will include detailed information regarding the solutions and plans the hospital initiated within the organization to resolve these problems. The report will also include information related to three types of quality or risk management techniques or tools the hospital could have used during their evaluation and implementation phases during the project.

It is not well known, however, how organizational learning and continuous improvement work dynamically and mutually. For studying the mutual dynamics of these two widely known concepts in the organization theory and quality management fields, the six sigma approach – an improvement methodology for business processes – forms a fertile context for examination. There are not yet too many scientifically sound reports and case studies of six sigma implementation in real-life. In the dynamic developments of pursuing organizational effectiveness, the six sigma approach is currently gaining more and more ground in high-performance organizations aiming at the highest level of quality (six sigma by definition). Managers allocate resources to the improvement activities they regard as crucial for increasing organizational performance. Six sigma is an improvement method that aims to increase business performance through solid and accurate business focus. The applying of six sigma is progressing in Finnish business life, and this paper reports on a preliminary case study in three companies. Conclusions are made and on how learning and continuous improvement practices support each other, and on the type of learning in the six sigma implementation The findings show that in a procedural implementation of six sigma learning mechanisms and continuous improvement practices are intertwined creating mainly a single-loop type of learning. The type reminds a technical

This project demonstrates a high application of Six Sigma tools. The team used a fishbone diagram for cause-and-effect analysis to understand the various factors involved in the relationship between labor and production. They used root cause analysis to identify the most significant causes for high labor costs through contract labor hiring. A process map was used to determine under what circumstances they needed extra workers that hiring casual labor was necessary and to show the amount of manpower needed to execute product order receipts. Furthermore, statistical analysis was used, specifically hypothesis testing through a two-tailed t-test, to see if there was a significant difference after improvements were implemented to determine if the changes had any impact. The project

Looking at the success of Motorola, many companies like Texas Instruments, Allied Signal etc started using Six Sigma methodology to bring organization-wide improvements.