MILWAUKEE, WI – U.S. hospitals are beginning to embrace Lean and Six Sigma business management strategies to reduce costs and improve productivity, according to a new benchmarking study by the American Society for Quality.

The ASQ claims its Hospital Study, which includes 77 hospitals, is the first to investigate the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma management methods in U.S. hospitals. Both have only recently moved into healthcare, and there is little substantive data available for hospitals to assess their worth.

Lean emphasizes removing waste from organizations and processes while focusing on and delivering more value to customers. Six Sigma focuses on variation reduction in processes, products and services.

According to the ASQ study, 53 percent of hospitals report some level ("minor," "moderate" or "full") of Lean deployment, and 42 percent of hospitals report some level of Six Sigma deployment. Few hospitals participating in the study reported "full deployment" of either Lean (4 percent) or Six Sigma (8 percent).

The reasons that neither method has been deployed in hospitals include the need for resources (59 percent of hospitals), lack of information (41 percent) and leadership buy-in (30 percent). Eleven percent of hospitals surveyed are not familiar with either method.

"During these turbulent economic times when healthcare costs continue to rise, it is crucial that U.S. hospitals look to methods like Lean and Six Sigma to become more efficient," said James Levett, MD, chairman of ASQ’s healthcare division and chief medical officer for The Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa. "Many healthcare systems are still in the ‘infancy stage’ when it comes to using these vital cost-cutting tools."

The ASQ study found that the primary factors leading hospitals to deploy Lean and/or Six Sigma are:

Lean: Improving hospital throughput (73 percent of hospitals), business/cost need (68 percent), quality need (56 percent). Six Sigma: Business/cost need (69 percent of hospitals), quality need (62 percent), improving hospital throughput (41 percent).

Hospitals noted that the biggest challenges in implementing Lean or Six Sigma include sustaining improvements, competition from other initiatives, leadership commitment and availability of resources.

Surveyed hospitals also reported a median investment of $25,000 for their 2007 Lean initiatives and $96,485 for their 2007 Six Sigma initiatives.

While the data returned is for a small sample of hospitals that have actually deployed Six Sigma and Lean (and, thus, statistically has a wide margin of error), the ASQ says it nonetheless provides a starting benchmark for the industry for location of efforts and potential for returns.