Case 1

Assignment Overview

Before beginning this assignment please view these videos:

Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare Introduction

Six Sigma for Healthcare – A Better Hospital in Five Days

Case Assignment

You are attending a general meeting with management to discuss proposed changes in the Quality Assurance program secondary to a “never event” occurring in your organization [you can consider any never event offered by the AHRQ]. After the presentation and during a question and answer period, several nurses indicate that the “never event” occurred because of inadequate staffing. Several surgeons joined the nursing staff in these allegations.

1. What would your response be to their statements?
2. Discuss what a “never event” is.
3. Discuss what never event occurred that was discussed at this meeting. You must pick one never event such as wrong site surgery, wrong medication given, wrong blood transfusion given, etc.
4. Discuss how you would go about examining the validity of their statements.
5. What measures you would implement on an ongoing basis to prevent a recurrence of the “never event”.

In this module, you also learned about 4 approaches to quality assurance- TQM, CQI, Lean & Six Sigma.

1. Which of these approaches would lend to preventing a “never event”? Justify your answer.

Assignment Expectations

Please support your position with adequate references in a 4-6 page paper (This does not include the title or reference page).