Below is an excellent article that describes how a hospital employed Lean and Six Sigma to improve outcomes for patients.
“After gaining buy-in for our new culture, we moved on to improving processes. We started with the macro-level goal of reducing our length of stay then moved to examining the micro-level processes impacting the larger issue. For us, that meant essentially examining every process occurring during a patient’s hospital stay — from admission to discharge.
A group comprised of senior leadership, front line management, industrial and logistical engineering and Lean Six Sigma consultants began by mapping out the entire timeline for a patient stay from the time the patient shows up at the ER or his or her physician requests an admission until the patient is discharged and the room is cleaned.”