How Does Six Sigma Affect A Quality Revolution?

The idea of improving healthcare quality, reducing waste, and creating a more efficient system is not a new idea in healthcare. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a book called To Err is Human in which it reported that as many as 98,000 deaths occur each year in healthcare due to medical errors. This one publication seemed to be the catalyst which sparked a quality revolution! This report was quickly followed up in 2001 by Crossing the Quality Chasm which outlines 6 aims for improvement that, if achieved, would lead to an overall better, safer healthcare system. The 6 aims describe in detail that healthcare should be: 1) Safe, 2) Effective, 3) Patient-Centered, 4) Timely, 5) Efficient, 6) Equitable (Medicine, p. 39, 1999). And it is with the attempts to make healthcare more effective and efficient that Six Sigma enters.

The higher the Sigma value the better the performance while the lower the value the more defects per unit. While only being incorporated into healthcare less than 20 years ago, according to Evans, “The business case for Six Sigma was eloquently stated more than a century ago. In October 1887, William Cooper Procter, grandson of the founder of Procter & Gamble, told his employees, “The first job we have is to turn out quality merchandise that consumers will buy and keep on buying. If we produce it efficiently and economically, we will earn a profit in which you will share” (Evans, p. 8, 2015). While GE and Motorola found great success utilizing the concepts of Six Sigma, many hospitals today are trying to follow in their footsteps by applying the methodology and tools in Lean Six