Improving Healthcare Referral System Using Lean Six Sigma
A big piece of provider marketing is managing the referral base, which can be a significant percentage of an organization’s business. From the referring provider’s perspective, it can be quite frustrating to refer a patient for services where the patient has to wait a long time, where communication is not sent back to them in a timely manner, or where there is confusion about the referral process itself. It is not always the marketing leader’s job to improve processes, but they are certainly stakeholders in the process given how much the process impacts the satisfaction of those providers referring in.
After reading Improving Healthcare Referral System Using Lean Six Sigma, write an article critique that accomplishes the following tasks.
Begin by briefly summarizing the premise of the article and its relation to this unit’s concepts.
Explain how the Lean Six Sigma process helps the marketing team.
The patient referral request process for the hospital (Figure 2) includes multiple process steps. Briefly analyze the risk of communication breakdowns between the various steps.
In reviewing the fishbone diagram of reasons for delayed physician response (Figure 4), which reason do you believe is most impactful, and why?
From a marketing perspective, how would you share with referring providers the improvements they can expect between the two value stream maps (Figures 6 and 7). Remember, marketing is not necessarily sharing all the details, but rather the difference in experience for them.
Compare and contrast health care marketing to non-healthcare marketing from the viewpoint of physician engagement.
Sample Solution
The article “Improving Healthcare Referral System Using Lean Six Sigma” discusses how healthcare organizations can leverage the Lean Six Sigma methodology in order to improve their referral processes. The author explains how this approach can help marketing teams address common challenges faced when managing referrals such as long wait times, lack of communication and slow turnaround times.
In particular, the article notes that the Lean Six Sigma process involves five main steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC). This helps organizations identify potential areas for improvement within their current system by collecting data regarding customer service satisfaction levels and efficiency metrics related to processing referrals (Keerthi & Ramaiah 2020). Once this information is gathered it can be analyzed using a variety of quality control tools such as value stream mapping which allow marketers to visualize where bottlenecks occur throughout the entire referral process. From there they can develop solutions based on evidence-based best practices like improving workflow optimization or streamlining documentation requirements in order to reduce cycle time from days down to hours (Keerthi & Ramaiah 2020).
Overall, properly implementing a Lean Six Sigma approach can have numerous benefits for marketing teams tasked with managing referrals. By utilizing quality control principles while also leveraging data-driven insights into existing processes, healthcare organizations are better equipped to provide an overall smoother experience for patients who require specialty care services while at the same time increasing satisfaction among referring providers.
