In USA, a IOM survey was conducted to estimate the cost of medical errors. The survey showed that approximately medical error cost $37.6 billion each year to US nations. Survey also showed that from total amount, about $17 billion can be saved by correcting those errors. These errors are basically:
Six sigma is successfully applied in following organizations:
Main target of Six Sigma is to reduce process variation and then improving capability of the process. In this regard, one logical example is waiting time of patient. If one time patient waits for 10 minutes and next time, he waits for an hour, and then it does not mean that patient will count it as average waiting time of both. But it will dissatisfy customer due to large variation in waiting time.
Six Sigma is methodology to reduce errors and defects by applying different statistical and managerial tools. This was coined by Motorola and then used by different world class companies like GE, Allied Signal and Honeywell etc. Initially this was only for manufacturing organizations but now it is being widely used in banking, IT, hotels and healthcare. Main target is to achieve a target of 3.4 DPMO. This means that if a product has 1 million opportunities of defect, then in Six Sigma terms it must be within 3.4 defects or 99.99975% error free product or service.
In one annual report of USA, some statistics of Six Sigma use in health care are given. According to that report if a company is working at 2.8 Sigma level, then it means that 200,000 wrong drug prescriptions will be written as compared to Six Sigma level, where rate of wrong prescription will be only 68 per year. Similarly, operating at 2.8 Sigma level, 5000 incorrect surgical operation will be carried out weekly as compared to Six Sigma level, when rate of wrong operations will be 1.7.
These were some simple description of health related errors. These errors can be minimized to protect human health and increase customer satisfaction level and also providing health services to more customers within the same span of time. But one question comes in to mind, that how to select Six Sigma project. For this some possible areas in health care are given below:
Oskar Olofsson, 2009