Process Improvements In The Health Care Industry

The pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital sectors of the health care industry are aggressively embracing process improvement techniques to reduce costs and to enhance customer satisfaction. In Canada, Germany, the UK and the USA, health care organizations employ techniques such as process automation, total quality management, process re-engineering and enterprise integration. These techniques have resulted in dramatic operational improvements in several cases, according to a new Financial Times Management Report.

Despite significant investment, the results of implementing process improvements within the health care industry have been mixed. For every success story, there is at least one disappointment - often arising from a lack of commitment, lack of resources, or a focus that is too broad, the report suggests.

On the other hand, within organizations that are willing to commit to the cultural change of process improvement, the results are quite positive. Across three sectors within the health care industry and four vastly different countries, health organizations are demonstrating that process improvement principles, which were originally developed in the manufacturing sector, are not only applicable to health care, but also critically important to performance, the report found, saying that the urgent need for continuous operational improvement across the three industry sectors suggest that the application of improvement techniques will expand within health care.