More for less with Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare
Written by Cheryse Fortuin
Meet Denise. Denise is a real ‘people person’ with a passion for her job as caretaker. She adores her clients and even the less glamorous tasks she performs with love. When her clients are happy, she is happy. However, in the last few months she has been forced to realize that, like many of her colleagues, she has lost precious time on administration — and that makes no one happy.
To keep afloat in the current economic climate every business and organization has to be bold enough to take a serious look at their own processes. It is the only way to always stay one step ahead of budget cuts without losing productivity or quality.
Are you working in Healthcare and feel responsible for the quality of your work?
With Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare you can improve it.
Herku mainly services health care institutions and businesses, helping them develop a crisis proof business strategy by changing the corporate culture from the inside. Working with both managers and caretakers, Herku develops processes that will not only increase quality and save costs in the long run, but will also create more time for clients.
To achieve this Herku uses a unique combination of the improvement methods Lean and Six Sigma that has been specifically optimized for the health care industry.
Lean was developed by Toyota and aims to eliminate unnecessary actions from the process. In other words, it concentrates on efficiency and time saving.
Six Sigma on the other hand is designed to increase the quality and predictability of the outcome, irrespective of the people involved.
The wonderful thing about these methods is that the basic principles are not restricted by time of fashion, and therefore they are perfectly applicable in other industries, such as health care.
Herku works according to the five stages defined by Six Sigma, called DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control). In every stage the input from the team is key; after all, they are the only ones who are truly familiar with the in’s and out’s of the problems at hand.
Herku provide on the job advice; they guide and guard the entire process from beginning to end and help to bring complex issues down to the core.
Often times, as an organization it is difficult to see the forest for the trees and identify the true causes of a problem — let alone deal with them. This is where our professional consultants are of great value. Instead of simply giving you a solution to the problem, we will give you insight into the causes. Whoever wants to effectively remove the weeds ultimately has to pull out the roots along with the plant.
If we are honest we have to admit change does not happen in a day. More often than not it is complicated, messy and unpleasant. At Herku we take the time — time to talk, time to adjust, time to continually improve, even ourselves.
Would you like to know more about Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare, how to get certified, please comment below.
