In this second installment of Pub Chat I am posting an interview with Mark Testa, the Vice President of Quality & Analytics at Catholic Health Services in Miami, Florida. Mark is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt trained at Motorola and now responsible for planning, designing and implementing quality and process improvement strategies at CHS.
With or without last week’s SCOTUS decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act the healthcare industry – including post-acute/long-term care providers – has been steadily seeking to make greater use of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies in quality and performance improvement. There are a lot of talking heads out there running around promoting the future of, “Data-Driven Healthcare.” Frankly, I don’t think many of them understand what that really means – and this is an area where having a little bit of knowledge may be more detrimental than continued ignorance if bad resource investment choices are made.
So I thought it would be helpful to provide some basic understanding of these concepts, as well as several suggested resources where you can learn more about quality and performance improvement in healthcare. I hope you enjoy the interview, which you can listen to by clicking on Larry’s microphone, below:
~ Sparky
Recommended resources to learn more about Quality, Performance Improvement and the applicability of Six Sigma principles to Healthcare:
ASQ ~ Lean and Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare
Quality Digest
Lean-Six Sigma for Healthcare: A … Guide to Improving Cost and Throughput
Six Sigma in Healthcare: Today and Tomorrow (HIMSS)
Sparky's Policy Pub 
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