Continuous Improvement Projects in Hospitals: A Systematic Literature Review
The continuous improvement projects i.e., CIP, are the short term systematic mechanisms based on team work in order to reduce the variations and eliminate the waste from the systems and processes without any investment of capital in the organization. CIPs play a significant role in the hospitals, by addressing major issues in the hospital such as the efficiency of the internal process, quality of the healthcare delivery, service cost, coordination, and communication. The hospitals that are implementing CIPs are obtaining remarkable results, but as a matter of fact they lack the ability of sustaining the CIPs. Reference analysis and the content analysis is used in this paper for identifying the five lines associated with CIPs, which are, Implementation of CIPs, Results from CIPs, Stage of the Field, Performance Measurement, and Role of Participants.
Further, Product Life Cycle or the Knowledge Life Cycle, which represent the demand of the particular skill, knowledge, and product by society with the passage of time, however, comprise of four phases introduction, growth, maturity and decline. CIP is in the growth phase. Further, Kaizen Event, Six Sigma, and the Lean Six Sigma provide greater opportunities for further research by considering the lack of publications in the Kaizen Event and in the Lean Six Sigma, lack of the research papers in Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma, and lack of variety of the research methods that are used. It is suggested in the paper that two research strategies, which are improvement of the research methods in order to develop the literature reviews as well as the research for testing of theory that incorporate two or more of the mentioned five lines of the research are required.
Integrated Lean Six Sigma Approach for Patient Flow Improvement in Hospital Emergency Department
In this paper, the proposed framework for the integrated Lean-Six Sigma approach is discussed on order to improve the patients’ flow in the emergency department of Aseer Central hospital located in Saudi Arabia. The major objective of this paper is the construction of the performance metric for improving the flow of patient. In order to measure the performance information about responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, empathy, professionalism, and reliability, is gathered from patients through questionnaire. The Lean concepts help in the elimination of waste through the processes of standardization, as well as the employee participation in the process of improvement. Six -sigma helps in quantification of problem, helps in facilitating evidence-based decisions, identification of the root cause of the variation for finding sustainable solutions, and helps the organization for reducing and understanding the variation.
For this purpose, integrated framework is developed, which incorporate Lean approach and the methods of six-sigma in order to improve the flow of patient in an emergency department. For an evaluation of the organization, the patients were asked about their background information, reason for attending the emergency department, quality, satisfaction of the patient with the present system of the healthcare services, and major problems considered by the patient. Then performance metrics is determined, which is evaluated and demonstrated in the fuzzy logic for ensuring continuous improvement in quality, and for measuring the overall performance in each dimension. So, in such cases ambiguous data e.g., human judgments can be applied and measured for establishing the results in case the fuzzy logic is used.
Quality Quandaries: Shortening the Throughput Time of a Hospital's Billing Process
An organization that has adopted Lean six-sigma becomes capable of significant improvement in the process in the form of the projects. Further, the Lean Six Sigma is not a strategy; rather it can just execute the improvements in the projects that are in consistent with the strategy of a company. This article is indicative of the fact the Lean Six Sigma approach is a significant method not only for the manufacturing processes of the company but also for the other major processes of an organization. With the use of the best practices such as the critical path analysis and the Gantt chart, in addition to the reliable project methodology, it becomes possible to reduce the time and to ensure improvements in the projects, as mentioned in the article that billing process was reduced by one month and probable improvements are identified for the year 2013 that further decreases time for the assignment of the prices.
Generic Process Mapping and Simulation Modeling of Inpatient Units in a Medical Center
This paper describe about the methodology for the mapping process of in-patient units on the medical center and simulation model development for measuring and improving the efficiency of nurses. The process mapping is, however, based on the application lean six sigma principles to the medical care of inpatient. Simulation represents a set of programming and numerical techniques for the representation of the stochastic model, and conduction of the sample experiments on such models by by utilizing digital computer i.e., by using technology and math that can effectually analyze infinite number of the unknown relationships between the cause and effect. The process map is developed because of the fact that behavior of nurse is driven from the admission of patient. After the admission of patient, nurses become idle, so this is the best way to grasp a general idea about the behavior of nurse. The simulation model comprise of the tasks that are non-patient oriented tasks, and generic variables as well as inputs, which can also be adopted through the Visual Basics interface for any kind of inpatient unit.
Design of a Rapid Response and High Efficiency service by Lean Production Principles: Methodology and Evaluation of Variability of Performance
In this paper, a criterion is set and a proposal for the implementation of the lean production techniques in services is described. The task is adjusted to the workstations to the largest possible extent possible aiming at the elimination of the wastes that are existing before the implementation, saturation, and balancing of the workstations to the workstation for increasing the efficiency, time, cost, and the competitiveness of the lean management. Furthermore, variability analysis is used that has helped in the development of the methodology in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the lean approach more effectually. All of them are then applied to those service sectors that are of great importance in today’s world such as the telecommunication sector, and it becomes possible to eliminate the waste, increase the productivity, reduction of the service time, and resolution of variability many times with the application of such operations.
