A Decade of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in Healthcare: Past Review, Current State and Future Perspective

Abstract

In the past decade, a number of healthcare setups have adopted LSS methodology to reduce wastages and improve efficiency in the service delivery and patient flow. But there is partial research done on understanding the sequence to be followed by healthcare organizations to implement LSS in their different departments. The applicability of various LSS tools in different kinds of healthcare settings is also not conclusive. This article focuses on mending this gap by mapping the current state of LSS in healthcare and identifies directions for future research. The authors have explained key concepts of LSS and investigated the existing knowledge of LSS implementation between 2006 and 2018 in various healthcare settings all over the world to answer key research questions on the application of LSS in various healthcare areas. Further, this paper is one of the first comprehensive studies that attempted to tabulate the LSS tools and techniques used in different healthcare delivery areas. The paper concludes that different healthcare services poses different types of challenges for LSS implementation due to their distinctive service delivery, but a single framework can be applied with a slight change in the usage of tools and techniques within the steps of that framework. Also, research opportunities exist to determine the appropriate path which a hospital should follow while implementing LSS, to identify the most suitable set of LSS tools and thereby empirically validating the benefits of LSS.