TQM and Six Sigma in Healthcare

Health organizations around the world are extremely interested in improving and bolstering the quality of the healthcare services that they offer to their patients to improve their levels of comfort and their ability to recover especially when they are under their care. There are myriad quality improvement tools that these healthcare organizations can employ to improve the quality of care that they offer and some of them include Total Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement, Lean, and Six Sigma. This article seeks to present as detailed and elaborate analysis of two of these methods, namely Total Quality Management and Six Sigma with the primary aim of determining the method that can be employed by healthcare organizations as the primary means of improving the quality of their healthcare services Total Quality Management is a quality improvement system whose philosophy is based on the approach that the overall quality of a product or service is influenced by the production process.

Therefore, for an organization to improve the quality of its end products to meet or exceed the expectations of the consumer, all the participants involved in management, dispensation, and production stages must be included in the quality improvement initiative.

The philosophy involves a broad-based approach that can be directed and implemented in different organizations. Six Sigma is also a quality improvement system, just like Total Quality Management, which is geared towards improving the products or services provided by an organization through the identification and elimination of errors within the organization’s business processes that influence the quality of the end product.

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Essentially, it encompasses a set of tools and techniques as well as a more defined approach to the quality improvement process that is aimed at helping the organization achieve its quality improvement goals.

Ideally, the Six Sigma Philosophy on quality improvement is guided by the conception that quality improvement should be undertaken as part of the organization’s business processes, and not just on a department-to-department level. Similarities between TQM and Six Sigma The first similarity between Total Quality Management and Six Sigma is based on the fact that they are both dedicated to identifying and eliminating problems or challenges within an organization’s business process that may be responsible for a defective product or service or that may prevent them from meeting the customers’ expectations. For example, if a health organization experiences perpetual problems with late delivery of medicines, both systems will go far beyond the delivery process and analyze other factors such as the creation and distribution of the drugs in an effort to find a clear cut ad realistic solution to the problem.

Another marked similarity between the two systems is the philosophy of continuous improvement which they both share. Each of these quality improvement systems is geared towards helping the organization to improve the process of production as well as to ensure that the quality of the end product is improved In most cases, this is done through incremental improvement of the various aspects of the products production chain. The two systems also share some of the tools that are widely used to assess and analyze the challenges facing the organization, especially statistical tools like Taguchi methods and Kano‘s models. In addition, many of the tools and techniques employed by these processes are quite similar and can be used across both systems, however, Six Sigma does utilize these tools in a detailed manner, Differences between TQM and Six Sigma The main difference between Total Quality Management and Six Sigma is mainly the manner in which each technique approaches the problem at hand, Total Quality Management generally approaches quality problems within an organization in a collaborative and cultural manner while Six Sigma takes a more statistical and data-driven approach to it.

Six Sigma depends on measuring and analyzing data from the production process in order to determine which defects and errors to minimize in order to achieve the best level of quality. Another difference between the two systems is their primary area of focus Total Quality Management ultimately focuses on attaining customer satisfaction as the main goal When deployed, Total Quality Management ensures that the organization moves onto a path that will enable it to meet the expectations of the consumer, and when these expectations are met then the TQM goals have to be redesigned to outline other goals. Six Sigma, on the other hand, focuses on the continuous improvement of all of the organization’s processes as opposed to just the final product. If a quality improvement project using Six Sigma is started within an organization, it will continue earning results of the organization even after the quality of the final product meets and surpasses the consumer‘s expectations.

The two techniques also differ in the way that they are applied by organizations to improve quality. Total Quality Management is normally undertaken by a quality control department within the organization, and is overseen by individuals or professionals who specialize in quality improvement as their main career Six Sigma projects take an entirely different mode of application whereby the ownership of quality improvement is spread out all over the organization as opposed to just one department, and is led by trained individuals well versed with the profession in question and have proven track records as well. Assessment From the analysis of the two qualities improvement techniques outline above, Six Sigma emerges as the better option for a health organization looking to improve the quality of its services

Using this technique, a health organization will be able to improve not only the quality of its services for its patients but also all the other related processes within the institution, ensuring that quality improvement occurs only at the end of the product line but all throughout the organization. Furthermore, the implementation of a Six Sigma quality improvement project would require the leadership of formally trained individuals with proven track records and are well-versed with the operations of the institution, as opposed to a general purpose quality improvement department. Such well-trained individuals would be in a much better position to understand in detail the factors that affect the quality of service given by the institution, and as such, they would be more qualified to make sensible changes that would result in long term quality improvement. Finally, the fact that Six Sigma is a statistical and data-driven endeavor also raises the chances that it will have a higher chance of success in improving the quality of the institution than Total Quality Management hence making it the better option.