Since the Institute of Medicine’s shocking conclusions in To Err is Human, healthcare quality and safety have been under public and regulatory agency scrutiny. The bar has continued to rise as hospital performance is made public through JCAHO indicators, CMS publicly reported measures, and a variety of quality awards such as the ANA’s Magnet hospital designation. There can be no doubt that providing evidence-based care safely is on every healthcare executive team’s agenda.
At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, we have achieved dramatic and sustained improvement in core clinical processes through the use of Six Sigma. To achieve these results, however, we had to learn how to effectively integrate Six Sigma with a host of other clinical improvement methods such as evidence-based medicine and “best practice” Collaboratives and Benchmarking partners. This session will provide you with lessons learned about integration of 6 Sigma methods with clinical quality improvement and an overview of our results.
Objectives:
At the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
- Identify opportunities for integrating Six Sigma with clinical quality improvement efforts.
- Define the relationship of Six Sigma projects to evidence-based medicine.
- Define the relationship of Six Sigma project to “best practice” Collaboratives.
- Describe the benefit of integrating Six Sigma into clinical quality improvement efforts.
- Identify key strategies for physician engagement.
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