Lean Sigma Performance Improvement in Healthcare Course

Introduction    

Lean Sigma, widely proven in other industries, can offer even greater value in healthcare. This course walks you through all leadership aspects associated with planning, executing, sustaining, or reinvigorating Lean Sigma in your hospital, system, or clinic.

This comprehensive course explains Lean Sigma without “stat speak.” Focusing on care providers’ unique challenges, this course help healthcare organizations improve, as it offers a practical roadmap for making Lean or Six Sigma work as well as demonstrating it through real case studies, illuminating key facets of change that are too often ignored.

Whatever your Lean Sigma leadership role–from patient-facing staff to senior executive to performance improvement specialist–this training course gives you an indispensable foundation for success. 

Course Objectives

On completion of this course you should be able to:

• Discuss how failure points in conventional change methods prevent performance improvement.
• Illustrate and apply Lean Sigma’s structured change approach and explain why infrastructure and sequencing matter so much Integrating Lean Sigma with strategy and operations.
• Know how to elevate individual process performance.
• Launch a Lean Sigma program or revitalize a stalled initiative.
• Learn from experience, and increase program maturity.

Course Outline           

Existing Change Models: Why the Traditional Healthcare Models Are Struggling

• Traditional Change Models
• Disparate Change Groups
• Uncontained Change
• No Standard Change Approach
• Tools Focus
• Reliance on Benchmarking
• Changes Are Not Based on Data, Good Data, or the Right Data
• Changes Made Based on Symptoms, Not Causes
• Systems versus Processes
• Focus on People, Not on Process
• Lack of Context for Solutions
• Adding versus Subtracting (Patching)
• Poor Implementation
• No Emphasis on Control
• Management versus Leadership
• Summary

 Structuring Change: Program Infrastructure

• Lean Sigma: The Program
• The Steering Group
• Setting the Program Direction
• The Fit with Existing Initiatives
• Shaping Projects
• Focus on Process
• Breakthrough Change
• Project Tiers
• Identifying Opportunities
• Characterizing Projects (Preliminary Project Chartering)
• Setting Goals
• Prioritizing Action
• Program and Project Roles
• Program Tracking, Reporting, and Ongoing Management
• Summary

Lean Sigma Roadmap: The Anatomy of a Project

• Lean Sigma Project Roadmap
• Define
• Measure
• Analyze
• Improve
• Control
• The Lean Sigma Roadmap: Why It Works
• Standardization Projects
• Kaizen (Accelerated Change) Events
• Summary

 Application to Real Life: Project Case Examples

• CT Capacity and Throughput
• Reduce Discharged, Not Final Billed (DNFB)
• Radiology Denials
• Behavioral Health Discovery
• Medication Delivery
• Registration Standardization
• Inpatient Admission Standardization
• Physician Office Standardization
• Surgery Capacity and Throughput
• Emergency Department Throughput
• Inpatient Placement
• New Emergency Department Design

 Commencing the Journey

• Program Vision and Launch
• Creating Program Infrastructure
• Developing Organizational Competence
• Transforming Processes
• Stabilization and Performance Management
• Globalization