What is your story? How has Lean Six Sigma Helped Reduce the Need for Capital Expense, especially in Healthcare?
I would appreciate you would post your comment also at http://blogs.biproinc.com/healthcare/?p=19
"......Such was the case with the X-Ray lab at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. People in acute pain were made to wait 40-50 minutes to see a radiologist. The easiest solution that hospital found was to buy another X-ray machine at a cost of about $500,000.
But, wait. Did they buy the machine? No! ............"
Please visit the above referenced site for further stories!
Answers (3)
Jay T
Leadership and Management Professional
Best Answers in: Non-profit Management (2), Occupational Training (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Positioning (1), Career Management (1), Software Development (1)
In a hospital I served recently, the chief pharmacist was encouraged to take the Lean Six Sigma training and created a huge return on the initial investment in his training. I think overall, Lean Six Sigma created a new level of inquiry into the overall cost of operating a hospital-based pharmacy, whether it could serve a larger population than just the in-patient population, and whether and how technology could improve the delivery of care. Notwithstanding the Need for Capital Expense, it was a great experience working with someone who raised the bar of inquiry. In the end, the Captial Expenditure for technology actually improved the distribution of in-patient meds, the delivery of care, and created three new critically-important jobs. Conventional wisdom would suggest just the opposite, but the Lean Six Sigma Pharmacist was able to demonstrate how process issues were confused with content issues in other hospital departments. It was a great return on the investment of his time.
Rakesh R
Director- Global Shared Services Operations at Accenture (Corporate)
Best Answers in: Planning (2), Internationalization and Localization (1)
"Cost of scan per patient" is increasingly becoming a decisive factor for patients to choose an imaging center to go for X Ray, CT, MRI, Cathlab, Nuc PET or Mammo scan.
Cost of scan would depend primarily on -
1) Cost of the Scanner, X Ray equipment in this case &
2) Number of patients you get (say in a month)
Sometime back, I was leading GE's Healthcare Consulting Services in Asia Pac and to reduce the patient waiting time, we had deployed Six Sigma & Lean principles.
Since setting up machine for different kind of X Rays was the biggest time waster, teams reduced the waiting time by scheduling X Ray patients by X Ray type - Head, Chest, Limb, Spine etc. X ray scan patients normally take appointments unlike some accident related ICU scans. This made clustering of X Ray type very much possible & machine which was reset 30- 40 times in a day for each patient was now being rest 4-5 types in a day only when you shifted the X Ray scan setup for different body part.
This increased the X Ray machines' capacity to handle number of patients to 2 fold.
Whenever we use the word Capital Expense (Capex) there is another word which is associated and that is the Return on Capital (ROC). And this is where the act is....how much ROC ? And healthcare is no different.
Every entity would like to have a healthy a ROC. It will vary from economy to economy. In the US - one has seen this change in the recent reimbursement cuts. That is when the returns become low - you tend to hold on to the Capex. That is the only way you can achieve the ROC. The six sigma would then drill it down to the components where you would want to reduce/defer the Capex.
With my experience in healthcare - limied to India and the neghbouring countries - every sales person is pushing for the Capex outlay with the hospitals. But eventually the ROC is what dictates the buying.
In a developing country like India - the barriers to the ROC are many - average paying capabilities, shortage of doctors, high real estate rates (not to be discounted), high interests costs, rising inflation which pushes your base costs etc.. etc...
So eventually it is a balancing act dictated by the market.
