Quality Management
Lakeshore Health Network is committed to helping our physicians improve the quality of care they give to patients in our community by providing process improvement tools using well known systems such as Six Sigma, Lean, and Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) rapid cycle testing.

Six Sigma/ Lean is all about variance reduction and elimination of waste. Using this system allows control over your processes by eliminating unnecessary steps or procedures and encourages predicting or forecasting the future outcomes of a given process.

Team members from a system, map current process’, identify gaps or inefficiencies, then work to develop a plan of change.

PDSA- Plan Do Study Act - The PDSA cycle is shorthand for testing a change by developing a plan to test the change (Plan), carrying out the test (Do), observing and learning from the consequences (Study), and determining what modifications should be made to the test (Act).

Typically, teams test more than one change at a time. All of the changes are aimed at achieving the same ultimate goal. Using several linked Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles allows a team to test more than one change simultaneously.

For more information on these process improvement styles you may visit www.ihi.org.

A Resource from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. 15 June 2007. Institute for Healthcare Improvement. 15 June 2007.

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