The buzz around Lean Six Sigma at hospitals

You may have heard that Lean Six Sigma is catching on with hospitals and other healthcare providers. This business management strategy specificially addresses process flow and waste issues while focusing on variation and design to promote business and operational excellence. Essentially, Lean Six Sigma helps eliminate defects throughout an organization, which in healthcare can mean preventing medical errors, decreasing mortality rates, reducing lengths of stay, improving patient care, and improving quality.

"Using Six Sigma decreases variation; process outcomes become more predictable and effective. Lean targets the efficiency of processes, decreasing waste and increasing profitability," Marti Beltz, Six Sigma instructor for American Society for Quality and healthcare quality consultant, told FierceHealthcare. "Used together, they produce a synergistic effect not only economically, but also in terms of patient and workforce satisfaction."

Perhaps more importantly, Lean Six Sigma allows hospitals to achieve balance between the seemingly mutually exclusive goals of providing cost-effective, high-quality care. "Other industries struggled with [similar dilemmas] for many years but ul

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