Maximize ROI and Quality Improvement
Through Lean Six Sigma Methodology

 

The Current Environment

 

In 2009, Press Ganey found that Emergency Room turnaround time still averages over four hours, basically unchanged over the past decade. Robert Wood Johnson Hospital (RWJ) in New Jersey, a 2004 Baldrige Award winner, offers a 30-minute door-to-doctor guarantee for patients visiting their Emergency Room. This was accomplished by systematically eliminating the delays between registration, triage, examination, lab, imaging, and discharge or admission/transport. Whether we are identifying countermeasures to reach zero defects on wrong dosage errors or eliminating resubmission of denied claims, the Kohler HealthCare Consulting team achieves results driven improvements in quality performance and ROI.

 

Our Approach to Providing Assistance

 

Is 99% accuracy good enough? Or should you strive for Six Sigma, where 99.9997% of the products/services you produce are statistically expected to be free of defects? Defects could include hospital acquired infections, wasted units of blood, avoidable patient days and discharge delays, errors on claims, patient falls, or co-pays not collected at time of service.

 

Kohler HealthCare Consulting offers experienced health care professionals with the necessary tools to assist hospitals and other providers in evaluating, measuring and monitoring processes, procedures and systems that result in most medical mistakes and errors. Our work is a fact-based, data-driven philosophy of quality improvement that values defect prevention over defect detection. It drives customer satisfaction and bottom-line results by reducing variation and waste, thereby promoting a competitive advantage. It applies anywhere variation and waste exist. In simple terms, Six Sigma quality performance means no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

 

What Does That Mean To Your Hospital?

 

At a Three Sigma level nearly 1,350 incorrect surgical operations would happen per week nationally. At a Six Sigma level there would be one incorrect surgical operation in 20 years. Some examples of Lean Six Sigma quality improvements and ROI returns for a 395 bed hospital are:

• Obtained a $200K ROI on evaluating the appropriateness of ICU admissions
• Reduced contaminated blood samples—$30K to $50K ROI
• Optimized Skilled Nursing Unit RUGS at—$90K ROI

Other examples of process improvements are:

• Reduced the wait time for an appointment in an outpatient client from four months to two weeks
• Increased the accuracy of Emergency Room registration data by 40%
• Obtained a 75% reduction in medical necessity coding and billing issues in a 90 physician multispecialty group.

 

KOHLER HealthCare Consulting, Inc. (KHC)has a Lean Six Sigma team with extensive Six Sigma experience. Our quality improvement consulting team members are uniquely positioned to run special turnaround and process improvement initiatives throughout all areas of your organization. We use qualitative and quantitative techniques to drive process improvement. Our objective is to evaluate the process from the patient or the claim perspective and employ value stream mapping to identify critical factors vs. the non-value added steps in the cycle time. We perform surveys and data analysis, and provide training to staff and physicians to correct and avoid further problems as indicated.

 

KHC certified consultants have assisted clients in identifying and eliminating the delays, defects, and deviations in over 50 Six Sigma or Lean projects from improving lab performance to reducing medical necessity denials.

 

Our results are directly linked to our unique mix of health care backgrounds. Our consultants are experts in nursing, clinical, compliance, coding, billing, finance and regulatory issues. We understand the conflicts existing within your departments. Our goal is to provide the solutions and tools to remedy the situation.

 

Contact us to help

put the pieces together