Case Study: Six Sigma In The Operating Room

Introduction: Six Sigma in the Operating Room

Hospitals and health facilities are finding that Six Sigma is a useful tool for improving quality, throughput and the bottom line in the operating room.

Six Sigma projects in operating rooms have targeted areas such as:

• the first case starting times Improvement

• Optimizing technologies

• Improvement of room turnover times

• Appropriate and valid scheduling ensuring

• Improvement and development of admissions/registration processes first case delays starts main problems for many healthcare organizations and produce a domino effect on the rest of the schedule. A variety of factors may impact the average operating room turnover. Admitting procedures, scheduling conflicts and procedures for patient

According to Association of Perioperative Register Nurse (AORN) OR turnover times is defined as time between one patient’s exit and the next scheduled patient’s entry to the same OR on the same day (Wheels out to wheels in). Turnover times include cleaning time and setup time.

The ideal turnover times at the best performing OR suites average less than 25mins. (International data base).

A team from operating room staff and I were assigned to identify the key points by observing the intraoperative record (electronic document), next a team determined the causes of the problem and implement a solution.

Analyses were performed using Lean and Six-sigma management strategy to examine the process in the operating room and identify the way to proceed to reduce turnover times. SWOT leadership strategy has been used to identify the problem and brainstorming of the team.

Nurse mangers must become skilled in implementing organization change and in initiating change within the organization. Nurse leaders must initiate the changes they believe are necessary to strength nursing practice, provide quality care and create a better system. (Sullivan & Decker,

Lean is simple method of streaming a process resulting in increased revenue, reduced cost and improves customer’s satisfaction. Basically lean is faster, more efficient and economical and deliveries satisfaction quality.

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology that combines the benefits of Six Sigma tools with Lean manufacturing concepts in order to reduce process times and variation, resulting in an overall reduction in cost and improvement in quality. Six Sigma involves specialized statistical tools, whereas Lean manufacturing is an enterprise system that is incapable of being a stand-alone process.

In health care can help increase the amount of time care, providers are able to spend time with patients, reduce the time spent on paperwork and reduce the time people spend waiting for care.

In operating room lean six sigma used to reduce prolonged turnover times for patient and staff