The healthcare industry is perfectly situated to benefit from continuous process improvement. Rapid growth in the industry, the use of innovative technology to improve patient care and higher standards demanded by patients have created a “perfect storm” for process improvement.

In the past few years, dozens of stories have emerged about the implementation of Lean Six Sigma training and strategy in hospitals, research labs and doctor’s clinics, among other medical facilities.

Money is being saved at a time when efficiency is more important than ever. Patient care and experience is improving. It’s happened at U.S. Navy facilities that employed Green Belt training and spinal cord surgeons looking for safer, more effective operations.

Another one of the latest uses of process improvement was interesting because it did not involve patient care, but scheduling patient visits.

Improving the Patient Experience

Piedmont Healthcare in Georgia decided to change how the company’s 11 hospitals scheduled patient visits. The idea was to evaluate the process with the patient’s experience in mind. What worked for them? What didn’t? How could it be improved?

Such an approach is a key part of Lean Six Sigma and continuous improvement.

In creating the project, which resulted in a centralized Patient Connection Center (PCC) that coordinated all scheduling for patients, Piedmont hired an outside company to train personnel on Lean Six Sigma philosophy, according to Health Leaders Media.

They also worked with 32 employees; half of them were managers. The others were front-line staff. This demonstrates another key aspect of Lean Six Sigma, which is involvement at all levels of an organization.

What They Did

After examining the process of patient scheduling, Piedmont decided to scrap the existing method, which involved patients getting multiple calls for different Piedmont clinics and departments. Rather, they created the PCC, which centralized scheduling for all hospital-based services.

Before making the change, patients would get as many as eight different contacts from Piedmont. These calls included getting information for insurance or to schedule the patient’s next visit. Now, they get one phone call to handle everything.

“If I was a patient, what would I want?” Allyson Bonner Keller, executive director of the PCC, told Health Leaders Media. “I wouldn’t want to be contacted eight different times.”

The PCC launched in 2017. The department has 240 full-time employees. They scheduled 491,948 services and processed 576,326 inbound calls in 2018.

Revenue Benefits

Clearly, receiving one contact rather than eight is a vast improvement in patient experience. But Piedmont also realized other benefits. They included:

  • Reduced patient contacts by 66%
  • Increased point-of-service collections by 19%
  • Reduced initial denials from 9.6% of net revenue to 8.6%.

Together, this translated into $1.8 million saved.

The changes made through process improvement led to the revenue gain. Because there is now one phone call and all patient information is gathered before the appointment, the hospitals reduced the amount of initial denials from payers because all the information was available in the Piedmont records system from the start.

Piedmont’s story stands out because it shows that Lean Six Sigma can impact every phase of a healthcare operation – even the part where hospitals are simply scheduling patient visits. It’s a change that’s led to better service and almost $2 million (so far) saved. Few projects provide a better example of the goals of Lean Six Sigma.