Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Better Flow Via Six Sigma

The Problem

The average ED length of stay was 413 minutes (6 hours, 53 minutes). Fourteen percent of ED patients left before being seen, 40 percent of these had waited more than four hours. The hospital was losing about $7 million in revenue annually as a result.

The Solution

In June 2006, St. Vincent's launched a Six Sigma initiative to improve ED throughput. Teams were created to address an array of factors contributing to ED delays. Among the approximately 12 projects were those looking at the time the ED ordered a test to the time the lab received the specimen, the time it took to clean a discharged patient's room, time from triage to ED bed, time from inpatient bed ready until arrival of the ED patient to that bed, and the percentage of discharges by 2 pm.