The current situation on the market demands healthcare organizations to apply modern tools to improve its performance. Additionally, the growing cost of care demands healthcare organizations to optimize all the resources while improving the quality of care. Statistical process control (SPC) is one of the methods that can be used to improve the performance of any organization. In general, SPC is understood as using statistical methods to control the business or production process (Madanhire & Mbohwa, 2016). SPC is associated with Systematic gathering and analyzing quantitative data. In order to facilitate data analysis, control limits are set to understand if the changes in inputs and outputs are not due to the expected variations in quality or demand. These control limits are usually equal to three standard deviations to the left and the right from the mean value (Six Sigma). In practice, a healthcare organization may set the limit of time spent per patient, and if a certain care provider spends more time on patients than three standard deviations, it may be a signal for intervention.
SPC can improve the performance of organizations in a wide variety of ways. First, SPC helps healthcare organizations remain accountable (Madanhire & Mbohwa, 2016). Supervisors may not have enough time to assessments routinely, which may lead to decreased quality of care. Second, it may improve the response time to inconsistencies and emergencies (Madanhire & Mbohwa, 2016). For instance, healthcare organizations may choose to the number of patients admitted during a certain period, and if the statistics demonstrate that the number of patients has changed significantly, the hospital may react by increasing the number of care providers’ shifts or ensuring that there are enough medications to meet the needs of patients. Finally, SPC can help to refine critical processes. For instance, SPC can reveal that employees spend too much time entering information into the electronic healthcare system. This can help the authorities to conduct training or upgrade the computers to decrease this time.
Reference
Madanhire, I., & Mbohwa, C. (2016). Application of statistical process control (SPC) in manufacturing industry in a developing country. Procedia Cirp, 40, 580-583.