MANAGEMENT

Six Sigma and Healthcare

Six Sigma and Healthcare

Introduction

Six sigma is a strategy to improve the quality of any product or service. In the beginning, six sigma was mainly used in the product sector to improve the quality of the product, but now it is almost used in every sector. It was developed to increase quality and customer satisfaction. It was to decrease the number of defects to 3.4 in a million. Now days, health care and management are paying much attention to this strategy to provide quality health facilities to patients (Andersson & Torstensson, 2006).

It aims to reduce the amount of defects that occur in products. By reducing this variability in the output of produced items, cost can be reduced or profit increased. Defect elimination is an inherently sustainable goal, as defective products result in wasted resources, wasted energy, and wasted labor. Although health care is almost certainly the most excellent in the world for the lavish, it's extravagant expenditure and limited government interference implies that it is feeble or even missing for the poor and unemployed. 15% of the United Stated population is uninsured, and publicly funded programs, Medicare and Medicaid only cover people over 65, disabled and deprived. Over the history, a range of methodologies for procedure perfection from manufacturing and service operations have been switched to healthcare. These methods include thinking, which seeks to eliminate activities or process steps which do not add value to customers, queuing theory, which seeks to eliminate bottlenecks in processes and six sigma, which aims to lessen difference and create imperfection free of charge services.

Discussion

While Six Sigma has now entered the common language in certain business and manufacturing circles, “Six Sigma” is registered by Motorola, Inc., as a trademark. Originally implemented by Motorola as a statistically based way of improving the defect rate in the manufacturing of electronic devices, Six Sigma has now become widely recognized throughout a variety of industry sectors.

Healthcare is heading for a serious crisis worldwide. Reforming and improving healthcare is one of the most troublesome issues facing the United States, Europe, and, indeed, the rest of the world. When we advocate the use of principles of quality management in healthcare, we must be careful about what we mean. There are many different approaches to quality management. Not all have been equally successful. The cost of incorrect or missed diagnoses is harder to estimate, but is undoubtedly high, as well. Mistakes in diagnosis lead to inappropriate or even harmful treatments, as well as the need for additional care once the actual health condition is diagnosed. Finally, both diagnostic mistakes and inappropriate treatment Increase indirect costs because they require additional documentation and extra administration.

Increasing costs and decreasing coverage are not the only factors bringing the employer-based healthcare system to its knees. The federal government has also taken a massive hit because of this financing mechanism, which not only does not require employees to pay income taxes on the healthcare benefits they receive hut also allows employers to deduct them from their ...