Six Sigma Applied to Healthcare Using ConceptDraw Products

ConceptDraw MINDMAP and

ConceptDraw PROJECT, integrated

with ConceptDraw INGYRE2

technology, are powerful work tools

that take on any size project.

Setting the Stage

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southlake, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, recently completed a project to re-organize its health insurance validation process. Consultant Ralph Jarvis and his team used ConceptDraw’s brainstorming and the project management capabilities to create a new process that will be rolled out to 11 affiliated hospitals across Texas.

“The goal was to improve the patient experience by reducing wait times,” Jarvis says. “By reusing information, the hospital could ensure that its patients wouldn’t have to fill out insurance forms each time they moved within and between hospitals in the consortium,” Jarvis says. “ConceptDraw was a great communication and management tool. But what made it really stand out was that it also made it easy for us to demonstrate to hospital execs how our Lean Six Sigma approach was producing results.”

Building a Plan, One Idea at a Time

Jarvis says the project was actually made up of three smaller projects. The Six Sigma Black Belt project team used ConceptDraw MINDMAP to manage the brainstorming sessions for each focus area.

“First we used [ConceptDraw] MINDMAP’s brainstorming capabilities to create a visual representation of our thinking. What kinds of things did patients do while they were in the hospital? How much time was spent in any one step of care? How much time did it take to go to the next step, such as getting a CT scan, an MRI, or blood test? What could the hospital do when patients first entered the hospital that would ease patients’ stress and give them a positive experience?”

From Brainstorming to Planning

To facilitate the next step in the process, Jarvis’s team moved from ConceptDraw MINDMAP to ConceptDraw PROJECT and created a project management plan.

“The two programs share a common technique of storing data, so we could instantly view all of the brainstorming details inside a standard project plan,” Jarvis says. “That enabled us to jump right into establishing project timing, coordination among the various departments, and milestones and guidelines.”

Perfect for Lean Six Sigma

Jarvis says the ConceptDraw suite is appropriate for Lean Six Sigma because his team could use MINDMAP to pursue three integrated processes and then put them together into one project. Then the team could use PROJECT to create a timeline and complete a specific Lean Six Sigma model.

“What you're really trying to do with Six Sigma is to create a perfect process that eliminates defects—all the things that don’t add value to the end customer. You want to increase the customer's satisfaction with your products or services, and reduce costs associated with defects and inefficiencies. It’s all about focusing on what you need to get to the marketplace and satisfy the customer's needs. It's as simple as that.”

ConceptDraw Office’s Role in Quality Improvement

When planning for your next product roll out, there are a number of well-known variables that impact how well a product is received. Superior product quality is a proven contributor to market success as it has a positive impact on how customers perceive the value of the products they purchase. Many companies take their product standards so seriously, that they publicize them to consumers to influence their purchase behavior.

Exceptional quality also has a great impact on the user experience and encourages word-of-mouth advertising for product offerings. In addition, achieving superior quality standards has a positive impact on increasing customer retention. Excellence in product quality is important for both the retail and business-to-business markets. Quality can be used as a strategy by companies to build effective competitive barriers to market entry.

Six Sigma Role in Quality
One way to measure quality, is to calculate the number of defects over a given sample size. A methodology that is widely used to reduce the number of defects, thereby improving and maintaining quality, is Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a quality process that specifies the number of defects in a product cannot exceed 3.4 defects per million. This is a quality goal that many companies, from commercial bakers to computer chip manufacturers, strive to attain. Reducing the number of defects to 3.4 per million or less does not happen by chance or luck, and requires proper planning and discipline to keep the number of defects to appropriate levels.

Six Sigma provides a number of tools that are used to reduce variability in an organization’s business processes. There are two common methodologies used in Six Sigma which are used in different situations depending on if the process under review currently exists or is a new process being developed.

Define, Measure, Analyze, and Improve Control (DMAIC) is a Six Sigma method used for examining existing processes that fail to meet desired quality specifications. Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify (DMADV) is a Six Sigma method used to ensure that proper levels of quality are built into the product and development processes from the very start.

Many of our customers use CS Odessa’s ConceptDraw Office to assist in their Six Sigma implementation. ConceptDraw Office is a unique business software solution that combines business productivity methods and data visualization with project management technologies. It is well adapted to support both DMAAIC and DMADV methodologies. There is no other software product on the market as well equipped to enable one to observe and analyze quality processes inside and out. ConceptDraw Office makes it a snap to plan, develop, manage, and document quality processes.

ConceptDraw Office is comprised of ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO and packaged into one seamless software tool kit.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP
ConceptDraw MINDMAP is an excellent tool to enable the recording of observations and development of inclusive quality processes. If you have multiple processes to observe, ConceptDraw MINDMAP has the unique ability to capture all of those processes, each on with their own respective page, in a multi-page master mind map. Moving from observation to early process development is as easy as dragging-and-dropping items or objects that can be used to structure a process and then immediately assign resources.

ConceptDraw PROJECT
With a single push of a button, all observations and task information are automatically moved over from ConceptDraw MINDMAP to ConceptDraw PROJECT (you can also convert data to Microsoft Project). From a project vantage point it is easy to manage all the resources available to you and ensure proper management of all the processes put into place. With ConceptDraw PROJECT all your projects are available in a single view, which is critical when you have a common pool of resources that are utilized and managed across all ongoing projects. The built-in powerful reporting functionality keeps all project participants on track to ensure objectives and goals are met.

From ConceptDraw PROJECT, a number of visual scoreboard project reports can be opened in ConceptDraw PRO, a professional business graphics tool.

ConceptDraw PRO
ConceptDraw PRO is a professional business graphics and drawing tool that is an integral part of ConceptDraw Office. ConceptDraw PRO is well known for its ability to produce eye popping business graphics and flow charts, in professional formats.

Plan, Do, Communicate
ConceptDraw Office is a proven and powerful software solution that can assist you in the common challenges you are faced with when working towards meeting quality measurement and process definition goals.