Dutch Hospital Implements Six Sigma EVEN SMALL PROJECTS CAN MAKE A BIG

sized general hospital, with a staff of 930 and a budget of $70 million. In addition to being a general healthcare provider, Red Cross Hospital is the base for a 25-bed national burn care center that provides services to all of the Netherlands. In 2002, it admitted 11,632 patients, performed 8,269 outpatient treatments and received 190,218 visits to its outpatient units. During the past four years, Red Cross Hospital’s management and employees invested significant resources in building a quality assurance system, and at the end of 2000, the hospital was awarded an ISO 9002 certification. After that, management began undertaking quality improvement projects on a regular basis, but it was doing so without the benefit of Six Sigma’s project management system.