Course Curriculum

The health care industry has predominately utilized Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) as its process improvement (PI) methodology. Over the years, more robust PI programs have evolved to using a combination of PDSA and Lean Six Sigma. During the height of surges during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals were challenged with managing the pandemic in conjunction with managing daily operations. As a result, basic quality and patient safety initiatives became secondary to the daily chaos of managing an unknown opponent that touched every aspect of health care. Health care transitioned from a hospital mentality to a field hospital mentality.
The new normal initially resulted in a reactive environment that adversely impacted all areas of hospital operations, placing added strain on the already fragile revenue cycle. The paradigm and culture shift occurred almost overnight.
To adapt to this environment of “building an airplane while flying it,” health care professionals had to shift to a rapid PDSA model that included a just in time (JIT) approach. An example of one such JIT improvement was the management of patient falls, which continue to be a significant challenge for hospitals and other health care facilities. A recent study showed patient falls cost the health care industry $5 billion in 2020. This same phenomenon was evident across many patient safety metrics.
This webinar will provide examples on how PDSA and JIT were utilized to develop solid processes in an expedient manner to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving environment during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to:
• Identify how Lean Six Sigma assists health care organizations.
• Describe how COVID-19 impacted the work hospitals have accomplished regarding Lean Six Sigma

Speaker Bios

Stephen Griffin is a Master Black Belk, Lean Sensei, and the CEO of 6Sigmatek, LLC. He has over 29 years of Lean Six Sigma experience in the automotive, aerospace, medical/health care, electronics and banking industries. He has coached, mentored, and trained over 1,500 Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belts, 600 Lean Six Sigma Green Belts, 400 Lean Six Sigma Black Belts, 90 top executives, and 100 Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belts. Stephen has also served on the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program, a prestigious group that is responsible for overseeing the only quality award that is the result of a Congressional act and is awarded by the President of the United States.

Tandra Marburgh has more than 25 years of experience in health care, with 21 of those years in leadership roles. Tandra served as a national Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award Examiner for seven years, and she served on the Louisiana Board of Directors for the State Baldridge Award.

These speakers have no real or perceived conflicts of interest that relate to this presentation.