As Six Sigma invades the healthcare industry, many healthcare establishments are seeing the benefits and savings, and thus are going into Six Sigma themselves.
This is what Shanghai First People’s Hospital and Fudan University School of Public Health did. With the help of GE Healthcare, this is how the hospital launched its Six Sigma initiative:
- had Master Black Belts and Black Belts do six rounds of training including teaching the principles of the DMAIC five-phase approach, change management techniques, and presentation and finance essentials
- from the training sessions, the hospital learned valuable skills and was able to develop an internal team of Six Sigma Green Belts
- this Six Sigma team began a range of eight projects across the organization, whose goal is to lower costs and enhance process efficiency
- after six months, the eight projects had not only helped the customer realize the equivalent of US$135,000 benefit in clinical, nursing, diagnostic, logistic and administrative departments, but also had refreshed the hospital’s management capabilities to a quantitative level.
As more and more agencies in the healthcare industry go into Six Sigma, all the more I’m getting positive and happy. 
