Health Care Quality Engineering: Current Practices and Needs

• Activity Number: 282
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Quality and Productivity
• Author(s): James Benneyan*+
• Companies: Northeastern University

Abstract

Problems with our healthcare system are well-known and staggering, including poor access, inefficient processes, equity disparities, practice variability, and patient safety issues, all at enormous costs. In response and among other approaches, significant efforts are focusing on industrial front-line process improvement methods. These include six sigma, PDSA, lean, and other front-line approaches that all rely on significant testing and interpreting data - although typically with very little rigor in even basic statistical methods to support this work. This talk is divided roughly into thirds - discussing the current use of standard statistical quality engineering methods within this context, several disturbing trends and pitfalls, and potential opportunities and research needs to help accelerate improvement of healthcare processes.