Black Belt Volunteers Revamp Hospital With Six Sigma

Typically when Corporate America deigns to donate its services to charities, the help is more oriented towards publicity for the private company than any real effort and helping the charity.  So it came as a surprise when after GE Consumer Finance offered to assist St. Gemma’s Hospice, they didn’t just hold a corporate sponsered bazaar in the parking lot.  Rather, the company committed some of its Six Sigma black belts to the task of streamlining the business model and improving the organization’s efficiency.  In a single day, the Six Sigma black belts made a host of suggestions that after implemented vastly improved the efficiency of the company.  While some were more complex, a number of changes were as simple as using telephones to order food up to rooms rather than have nurses run downstairs to place the orders. Times Online Reports:

So, how did the staff at St Gemma’s react when the men with black belts in data drilling knocked at their door? “At first you think, ‘how can this work?’ ” says Tracy Dick, director of business at St Gemma’s and part of the consultancy process with the GE team. “How can someone who doesn’t know the hospice, the rooms, the patients, make improvements?” But the hospice staff was soon won over.