Lean Six Sigma and Total Quality Management

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LEAN SIX SIGMA AND TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
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Running Head: LSS AND TQM
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Lean Six Sigma
Overview
Lean six-sigma is considered as a method or strategy which depends on the team
efforts in order to improve the performance by reducing the variations and removing waste. It
is a combined strategy of two different process techniques: Lean and six-sigma (Pepper, &
Spedding, 2010). The cost for medical care is increasing day by day and ultimately impacts
the patients. Therefore the model like lean six-sigma needs to be implemented in healthcare
that helps the healthcare provides to reduce the cost and improves the services qualities. Lean
concentrate on waste elimination or reduction and six-sigma focuses on enhancing the
process quality and its efficiency (DelliFraine, Langabeer, & Nembhard, 2010). This
executive summary will discuss the pros and cons of the model and its impacts on quality at
the patient level.
Pros and cons
Lean six sigma model is beneficial to reduce the errors that may be caused by
techniques doctors or nurses at the hospital setting. It improves the capacity utilization,
improves quality, longer-term sustainability, improved turnaround time in the diagnostic labs,
it ultimately leads to improved patient/ customer satisfaction, and reduces the number of steps
in supply chains. It is also beneficial to make the reimbursements of insurance claim much
rapid (Delgado, Ferreira, & Castelo Branco, 2010). It generally focuses on simplifying health
care processes by gaining knowledge about eliminating waste and adding values. One of the
most important advantages of implementing lean six-sigma in an organization is that it
increases the employee involvement by enabling them to participate in the process

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improvement that is designed to help them for process improvement (Assarlind, Gremyr, &
Bäckman, 2013).
Lean six-sigma is not always cost-effective and sometimes it is expensive to
implement the model in a company or hospital setting. The flexibility of the model is also
questionable. The top-down approach needed a new diagnostic process that requires a cross-
functional team. The bottom down approach has not a strong link to the strategy and there is a
risk of sustainability (Langabeer, R., DelliFraine, Heineke, & Abbass, 2009). Lean six-sigma
is only for the larger organization, thus it is not beneficial for the small companies. It is
difficult for the new organization as they may be unfamiliar with that model. Another big
disadvantage of this model is that it takes a lot of time to implement and require high change
management and high cost and dedication (Albliwi, Antony, Abdul Halim Lim, & van der
Wiele, 2014).
Impact of lean six-sigma on quality at the patient level
Lean six-sigma has great impacts on patients in hospitals such as preventing medical errors;
reduce the time of hospitalization, decreasing the mortality rates, improving the quality and
patient care. Over the past ten years, the application of this model has been increased in
healthcare settings. The application of this model includes reducing the waiting time,
unnecessary medical costs, and providing adequate and accurate results to diagnose and treat
the patient more effectively (Fischman, 2010). The LSS is also impacting the clinical areas
positively and prevent the infection that may affect the patients in the hospital setting. It also
reduces the time of medication delivery; because of this, the patient does not have to wait for
a longer time period. Some of the other benefits of LSS that ultimately impacts the patients
positively includes increasing the X-ray rooms capacity, improving surgical efficacy,
enhancing productivity healthcare personnel, improve the accuracy of diagnostic laboratory

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results, and enhance the accuracy of the billing p0proces that ultimately reduce the errors
associated with the billing. LSS implementation typically focuses on patient safety and
process optimization by reducing the waste and the errors by using process re-engineering. It
also reduces the risk of wrong surgeries (Chassin & Loeb, 2013), and reductions in
medication discharge errors and medication order (Pocha, 2010).