Healthcare is important to all of us. We like to believe that not only are we being cured of our ailment, but that our healthcare provider really does care about us. If it is our loved one that is being affected, we’d like to believe that the healthcare provider did everything within their power to save or improve their quality of life.

On the other hand, the healthcare provider has to deal with operating costs, government control of health insurance reimbursements, rising malpractice lawsuits, among other financial issues. It is safe to assume that rising healthcare costs isn’t all the fault of the economy; some of those costs could be attributed to the providers not being as efficient and effective as they could be.

Six Sigma to the Rescue

Six Sigma is a data driven process, which means the decision maker is…data. So gut instinct, intuition, even past history doesn’t play any part in changes that need to be made in the present.

This data includes Six Sigma’s own tactics that will prioritize and isolate the issue at hand; then given a time frame (usually 4-6 months) to improve the issue by 50%. Please understand that Six Sigma’s ultimate goal is to get the problem corrected to as near perfection as possible.

The healthcare industry is the ultimate service industry. So as an example, you’d have to define the patient’s needs, requirements and the process that is being targeted for improvement. Each improvement has its own targeted requirement. Patient satisfaction is top priority in the healthcare industry, and it looks like Six Sigma is making its mark.

6Sigma.com has many clients across the healthcare field, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, California Department of Mental Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Aetna, among others.

If you would like more information or are interested in one of our courses please visit the 6Sigma.com training class schedule.

Learn more information about 6Sigma.com’s Lean Six Sigma training coursework, available as classroom, onsite, or online options.

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The Conversion

Although the processes are the same, they have to be converted on a personal scale with a personal meaning to your specific issues. The Six Sigma tools are brilliant in their simplicity, and can be used to ultimately fix the root causes.

DMAIC: The Phases

See how applying DMAIC makes sense with your own budgeting needs:

D-Define: In this phase, you will need to establish your issue (problem) in a clear concise statement. Then, outline what you expect to achieve (goal) along with a specific time frame. This also includes why it is important that this change takes place.

M-Measure: In this phase, collecting data is done on a continuous bases, so we should know the minute we have hit one of our prime causes for the current situation. So, we want to identify all those causes. Sample causes are — not having a budget or not staying to current budget, eating out too much, being undisciplined in spending, or not making enough money for current lifestyle.

A-Analyze: This phase is a little tricky, because there is the surface issue of what is causing the problem, and then there is the root cause of the problem. So looking at the Measure phase, figure out which issue is causing your lack of money. Then figure out why you are doing that. So, if you find that you are impulse buying after you have a bad day at work, now you need to figure out what is causing those “bad” days at work.

I-Improve: So, after you have figured out the deep rooted causes for your excess spending, it’s now time to get creative and start thinking of possible solutions. You need to test drive these solutions to see if they are sustainable.

C-Control: Be gentle with yourself in the control phase. After all, the improvements might have worked short term in the test drive stage of the Improve phase, but aren’t really sustainable in the long term. So armed with strong intention, if the new recommendations you have established aren’t working, then redo them to more controlled, sustainable ones.

Learn more about Six Sigma tools through one of our training courses! For more information on our courses or services please visit 6sigma.com.

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The core of Six Sigma is reducing and/or eliminating waste or defects through process improvement. Beyond the initial process improvement efforts, it is about ensuring that standards are set in place that ensures that processes are perpetually improved. This is what is usually referred to as continuous improvement – without this, all Six Sigma projects will be rendered mute over time.

And why go through all this trouble of improving processes? To make sure that value flows through each process unhindered, all the way to the customer.

In order to improve a process, its performance has to be measured. You have probably heard the saying that what cannot be measured cannot be managed. It is in the measurement of performance that KPIs are important to Six Sigma.

What is a KPI?

Before we talk about how KPIs are important to Six Sigma, let’s define what they are. A KPI or key performance indicator is any numerical value that can tell an organization how well it is performing when it comes to achieving its goals. Organizations usually have goals that they wish to achieve, and KPIs tell them what progress they have made so far versus how much more progress they need to make to achieve their goals.

It is believed that KPIs are an invaluable tool for an organization’s decision-makers. By looking at the KPIs, they can tell if the performance they see is expected or below expectations. If the performance is below expectations, then leadership will make the appropriate decision to get the organization back on track. 

And the decisions are likely to lead to successful outcomes since they will be highly informed decisions. 

How to come up with good KPIs?

Now that you know what a KPI is, let us look at how one can come up with good KPIs. While this is not an exhaustive list, you are likely to come up with a good one if the KPI has the following characteristics:

• A good KPI has to be measurable, otherwise, there is no way it can be called a KPI.
• It also has to be related to the organization’s strategic objectives at that time, otherwise, you will end up measuring an irrelevant KPI.
• The KPI needs to be in line with the customers’ requirements and demands
• It has to be simple and well defined.
• It needs to be assigned to an owner; someone who is responsible for reporting and measuring it.
• The KPI needs to be assigned to an individual, team or department that is capable of making sure positive outcomes are achieved from measuring the KPI.

How are they important to Six Sigma?

The question of how KPIs are important to Six Sigma is all about picking the right project to work on. When the performance of an organization is measured, KPIs reveal whether certain targets are being met or not. By looking at which targets are not being met, an organization can identify the processes that need to be improved and start working on the appropriate Six Sigma project to meet those targets.

Without knowing which targets to aim for through the KPIs, it can be all too easy to work on irrelevant projects. Once this happens, the organization will not achieve its goals, and a lot of time, effort and money would have been wasted for nothing.

Besides that, measuring KPIs in Six Sigma projects tells the organization if the improvements efforts are leading them towards their goals. If not, then the Green Belt or Black Belt can take the appropriate action to ensure everything is on track. And by continually measuring the performance of projects, KPIs can also ensure that continuous improvements efforts are being followed through in the organization

Conclusion

As you can see, KPIs are also an essential part of Six Sigma. They ensure the Six Sigma projects being worked on are the right ones and are helping the organization achieve its goals. Overall, it is hard to see how Six Sigma can even be effective without KPIs.

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Any organization that sells products and services needs to communicate the value of its offerings to the target market. It is up to marketers to not only help the organization reach potential customers but convince them the offerings will provide the value they are looking for. That way, the customers will purchase the offering and the organization will make revenue.

To help organizations become profitable, marketers often launch campaigns to reel in potential customers. But sometimes this process can run into problems, which can lead to the expected return on investment (ROI) not being realized. In Six Sigma, the marketers are said to have experienced variation. This is a mismatch between what was expected and what has occurred.

In the face of variation, it is reasonable to ask what the cause is and how it can be resolved. Luckily, Six Sigma can help marketers get to the bottom of variation using a data-driven, scientific approach known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control). 

Here’s how that would work for a marketing campaign.

Define

The first step is to define the problem being experienced. The team would come up with a problem statement. This is a document that will contain a clear and concise definition of the issue and how it is affecting the organization.

The team would look at the goals of the campaign, how they would benefit the organization and if they are S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Based). An example of a S.M.A.R.T goal would be to increase the ranking of the organization’s website on Google to be in the top three results by the end of the year.

Measure

In the Measure phase, the marketers will gather all the necessary campaign data and measure it. Then they would make sure that the measurement system used is effective and that data integrity was preserved. Examples of data they can collect for a marketing campaign include click-through rates, conversion rate, number of impressions, number of social shares, and number of backlinks.

Analyze

After gathering and measuring the data, the marketers will then analyze it to extract insights. They can look at, for instance, where most clicks are coming from. Or how long people are staying on the page when they visit it. After all, the more people visit a website and stay on it long enough, the more Google will think it’s relevant. The Google search engine algorithm will award points to the website, which will boost its ranking.

Improve

From the insights gained in the previous step, marketers will know which marketing channels to focus on to increase their SEO ranking. By shifting focus away from the non-performing channels, they would be saving a considerable amount of time and money.

Control

By understanding what works and what doesn’t, marketers can now control the marketing process. The goal would be to standardize the procedures they used to increase the ROI of the marketing campaign. It also involves continuously measuring the results from the procedures, as well as updating the procedures when they are improved. The result will be a set of guidelines and/or an SOP.

As you can see, Six Sigma is a valuable tool for marketers. It can help them see a return on investment on their marketing efforts when the expected results don’t match the actual results. Through the DMAIC methodology, marketers can improve their marketing processes and improve drive positive outcomes.

You can check our online training here.

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It is said that somewhere between Point A and Point B lies the truth. Finding that elusive point of fact is one of the most challenging opportunities in quality management. Everyone has their view of how things are and their opinion is what they perceive to be the truth. If you ask ten different employees why they all complete the same task, you will get ten differing opinions. Each opinion will be fully supported by what they perceive to be the facts. Unfortunately, in most cases, you get ten different opinions that are just slightly different than the fact you are seeking. Nobody will be intentionally deceiving you, and they are confident that their facts are the truth. It is simply human nature. However, for businesses to be successful, they must operate on facts and not perception of fact. Getting to the facts is the goal of using the RCA.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a valuable tool in quality improvement for identifying the underlying causes or facts of a issue or incident so proper solutions can be identified and implemented. It is a tool designed to identify not only what happened and how it happened, but also why. When you truly able to determine the facts of why an event happened, then you be be able to apply workable corrective actions to prevent future events. Some organizations mistakenly interpret the term root cause’ to mean there is one root cause of an issue. Nothing could be further from the elusive truth. Focusing on one cause can easily allow you to implement a solution that misses the problem all together. The root’ of a plant is not singular, so the root cause of a problem typically is not singular. 

RCA Cause Mapping Method

Define – What is the problem? Define the issue or event by the impact on the goals.

Analyze – Why did it happen? Use a cause map to visually represent the issues.

Solve – What will be done? Make effective solutions that change how the work is executed.

The most effective cause map is a simple one, which illustrates the how and why an incident or event occurred. Begin the exploration of the 5 Why’s and expand that into as much detail as necessary. The more complex and challenging an issue, the more times you ask why. The RCA cause map will allow you to understand the issue and create a visual dialog. It will show where there needs to be a bit more exploration of the roots to find the truth.

An effective RCA process moves past the typically excuses of human error’ and procedure not followed’ that many organizations tend to use as excuses. It is a deep dive that can result in true quality improvement for the organization.      

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