Six Sigma Accreditation

Six Sigma Approach

Six Sigma is a business performance tool from amongst many process improvement practices that is specifically focused on eliminating waste and increasing customer satisfaction. In a service environment, it can quantify delays in processes and procedures & variations which cause dissatisfaction (defects). Most companies abroad operate at levels of around four sigma, or approximately 6,000 defects per million (Indian performance standards are even lower). When a company achieves a Six Sigma standard, it implies that it has improved its performance standards to the level where defects have been limited to 3.4 per million – virtually a defect-free performance. Adapting and applying Six Sigma methodologies leads to dramatically improved business performance and bottom-line profitability.

Recent research has indicated that Fortune 500 companies with the largest revenues are more likely to have a Six Sigma initiative. Eighty-two percent of the top 100 companies use the methodology, while only 27 percent of the bottom 100 companies apply it. Between 1987 and 2005, total revenues for Fortune 500 companies grew more than 450 percent, from $1.9 trillion to $9.1 trillion – use of Six Sigma approach was one significant factor that allowed these companies to grow at such a rate. Simply stated, when you apply Six Sigma to almost any key business process, you’ll see a positive return in bottom-line results and customer satisfaction.

Salient Benefits for Your Hospital

Performance and process improvement are very important to healthcare. Healthcare organizations strive to get consistent and predictable positive outcomes – in patient care and in their business operations. Application of Six Sigma tools and methodologies has seldom been well translated to the healthcare industry – until now. Six Sigma Star Healthcare conducts training designed specifically for healthcare organizations.

Healthcare professionals have many priorities, all centered on the goal of providing the best patient care. Recognizing the uniqueness of the healthcare delivery system, we developed Six Sigma training that will address the complexities that challenge healthcare managers, including:

• Patient throughput
• Financial management
• Patient safety
• Declining reimbursement levels
• Public reporting and accreditation
• Demands for capital investment to improve technology
• Medication errors
• Maximizing results in pay for performance plans

With specific and focused training, organizations can implement Six Sigma without having to adapt it to a healthcare environment.

Salient benefits that accrue to the Hospital after Six Sigma Accreditation are:-

• Improved overall patient satisfaction.
• Increased accuracy in treatment and added value to the services provided to patients.
• Six Sigma approach improves capacity and output of hospital staff.
• Reduced errors and better time & resource management.
• Increased reliability of service provided.
• Improved process and work flow.

Six Sigma Accreditation Board is committed to providing organizations within the healthcare industry with programs that will be targeted to their individual needs. This is why we offer a choice of learning options and instructors. Whether you wish to provide your employees with Six Sigma tools, or deploy a Six Sigma Management System, you can select the method that is the best fit for your organization. Expert-led training gives direct access to the healthcare professionals who can work and can help to implement data driven decision making within a traditional working environment.

Other Accreditations Vs Six Sigma Accreditation

No.	Other Accreditations	Six Sigma Accreditation
1.	Other certifications such as JCI, NABH proves that the hospital is on the right track of Quality Assurance and follows international standards to audit the hospital. It does not provide the tools it only says how it should be.	Six Sigma is all about the quality control; it shows how the hospital practices to improve their quality in services they provide to their patients.It provides a broader picture of minimizing defects and errors, cost reduction, maximizing productivity of available resources in a hospital setting.
2.	They focus on improvement in individual operations with unrelated processes; therefore, it takes more time for all operations within a given process are improved.	It focuses on making improvements in all operations within a process thus producing results more rapidly and effectively.
3.	They view quality as conformance to internal requirements.	It focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects.
4.	They are based on quality control approach that is focused on the development, implementation, and continual control of different hospital systems that are used with a number of different processes.	It is fact based and data driven, result oriented, providing quantifiable and measurable bottom-line results, linked to strategy and related to patient’s requirements.
5.	They are based on a particular organizational approach, an approach that zones in on how to keep already existing quality standards at a high while simultaneously improving quality.	It is applicable to all processes such as administration, sales, marketing and R & D. It is meant to revive the culture of a hospital.
6.	Other certifications expect to get different departments of hospital administration, patient safety, clinical service to work together so that it helps to improve the quality of processes and services.	Its focus is on strategic and systematic application of the tools on targeted different process of hospital like admission, discharge, and medication etc. at the appropriate time.
7.	Other accreditations strive for general improvements based on a collaborative approach to the problem.	It is alis also an approach that seeks to correct and improve the quality of hospital processes.
8.	Other accreditations define quality as the level to which services meet the quality standards.	It is usis used along with Statistical Process and Control statistics in order to monitor and maintain the processes.
9.	Other certifications are subjective in their approach – evaluation of the quality of service of a hospital is assessor- dependant.	It is a statistical and data driven approach that measures and analyzes data in an effort to discover on how variations and ‘defects’ can be reduced to the desired levels
10.	Other certifications, by and large, depend on the top management, its understanding and willingness to improve quality.	It also requires the efforts of numerous departments and involves improvement & monitoring of each and every process of hospital.
11.	Other accreditations define the quality of services through the process of self and external evaluation.	It shifts the definition of quality to a relational one, emphasizing that quality is based on the fewest number of ‘defects’, which must be reduced as much as possible.
12.	Other certifications definequality as patient satisfaction, which determines the value of the services provided.	In Six Sigma qualities are defined in large part by the patient satisfaction, who determines the value of the efficient process within the hospital and for that feedback is taken on basis of process related to the patient.
13.	Other certifications take an approach to quality improvement by working to improve the services of entire hospital.	It takes an approach to quality improvement, working to improve the hospital processes by focusing on individual processes and operations within different departments.
14.	Other accreditations do not require complete, full-time dedication to the quality management system of trained personnel in every department.	To implement Six Sigma’s approach, you need professionals certified in understanding and implementing Six Sigma techniques.
15.	Other certifications focus on quality and ignore Other critical business issues. Quality trumps everything else. This makes poor business sense and often leads to failures despite improved quality.	It extends the use of the improvement tools to cost, cycle time, and Other business issues / parameters.
16.	Other create a quality specialty that suffers from all of the same sub-optimization problems as Other functions within the organization. Despite all of our talk about a systems perspective, when push comes to shove we fight for our point of view (and our budget) just like everyone else – this results in Other departments considering “quality” to be the turf of the quality department. Thus, they backed off of, or, never start efforts of their own.	It discards statistical tools that are difficult to understand and completely ignores such staples of the quality professional and the Malcolm Baldrige criteria. Training focuses on using the tools to achieve tangible business results, not on theory.
17.	Other certifications emphasize minimum acceptance requirements and standards.	Integrates the goals of the organization as a whole into the improvement effort. Sure, quality is good, but not independent of Other business goals. It assures that the interests of the entire organization are considered.
18.	Accreditations never develop an infrastructure for freeing up resources to improve business processes.	Aims for world-class performance. It goes beyond looking at errors. The best of the Six Sigma organization is that they try to meet or exceed their customer’s expectations 999,996.6 times out of every million encounters.
19.	Certifications develop a career path in quality. Quality professionals tend to lack subject matter expertise in Other areas of the hospital. This ‘division of labor’, combined with functionally specialized organization, makes it difficult to improve quality beyond a certain level.	Creates an infrastructure of change agents those are not only employed in the quality department but work full-time on projects in their specialized areas. For example, Green Belts work on Six Sigma projects while holding specialized jobs. These experts are provided with training to give the skills they need to improve the processes. Six Sigma “belts” are not certified unless they can demonstrate that they have effectively used the approach to benefit customers, shareholders, and employees.

Benefits of Accreditation Through SSAB

• Demonstrated accountability and improved quality.
• Performance feedback and quality improvement.
• Self assessment of hospitals about their strengths and areas for improvement,
• Effective allocation of resources.
• Increased accountability to patients and stakeholders,
• Increased credibility of hospital.
• Accreditation standards positively impacts staff morale
• Increased visibility of the hospital in their communities

Assessment involves a process of collecting, analyzing, and using data to educate staff and mobilize resources, develop priorities, garner resources, and plan actions to improve service delivery. It involves the systematic collection and analysis of data in order to provide the health department and the community it serves with a sound basis for decision-making. It should be conducted in partnership with other organizations and include collecting data on process done, services status, health needs, assets, resources, and determinants of care delivery.

Service and process improvement is a systematic effort to address issues identified by the measurement of processes and improvement plan can be used by partners to prioritize activities and set priorities.

The accreditation process and standards are flexible and inclusive, accommodating many different hospital settings at all levels — tribal, state, local, and regional.

Six Sigma – Steps For Accreditation

1. Pre-application
2. Submission of Application
3. Document Selection and Submission
4. Training, DMAIC and Review & Control of Processes
5. Site Visit
6. Accreditation Decision
7. Reports
8. Reaccreditation

Time Taken For Achieving Six Sigma Accreditation

The average time taken to develop a plan and improve a process takes 3-12 months, depending on the scope and goals of the organization. Successful Six Sigma project implementation requires cross-functional teams. While Six Sigma is an established solid approach, it is not a “Magic Bullet”. Six Sigma is not just about improving quality, but transforming the culture as well.

Fees Structure

The fee for SSAB pays supports the evaluation of your hospital application for accreditation and provides your healthcare organization with training and tools for implementing Six Sigma and a full suite of ongoing accreditation services:-

• An assigned accreditation specialist to guide your department(s) through the application process
• In-person training for your hospitals accreditation coordinator
• Providing accreditation information system, making it easier and more cost-efficient for your healthcare organization to participate in accreditation
• Site visit, including a comprehensive review of your hospital’s operations and defined process against the performance levels of six sigma standards by a team of peer review experts
• Annual quality improvement guidance and support
• Identified opportunities for improvements to help your hospital better serve its patients
• Exclusive contribution to a growing network of accredited healthcare organization and best practices to enhance the data and evidence-based decision making in hospitals and departments of healthcare organization.

Fees are based on the size of the healthcare organization or department workload. SSAB Fee Schedule will be published annually – one year in advance.

The accreditation is applicable for a period of three years, beginning with the date of certification.