Improving patients’ satisfaction in a mobile hospital using Lean Six Sigma – a design-thinking intervention

Abstract

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) that offers a unique integration of Lean and Six Sigma has been accepted globally across services sectors. Previous studies that examined the application of LSS in healthcare were steered in traditional hospital settings. Apparently, there are no studies that highlight the application of LSS in mobile hospitals, an emerging trend in the healthcare sector. The aim of this article is to explore the applicability of LSS in a mobile hospital. The authors present a case study of improving patients’ satisfaction in a mobile hospital, through reducing turnaround time. Design-thinking intervention to LSS helped resolve a real-time problem using Define-Measure-Analyze-Design-Verify roadmap. This article contributes to the ‘healthcare quality” body of knowledge and is novel as it is the first of its kind of LSS application in a mobile hospital underpinning Design thinking. This study is unique as it demonstrates academia–industry collaboration in solving an organizational problem.     

The Idealized Cultural Identities Model on Help-Seeking and Child Sexual Abuse: A Conceptual Model for Contextualizing Perceptions and Experiences of South Asian Americans

In this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary framework to study perceptions of child sexual abuse and help-seeking among South Asians living in the United States. We integrate research on social marginality, intersectionality, and cultural psychology to understand how marginalized social experience accentuates South Asian immigrants' desire to construct a positive self-identity. Using model minority ideology as an example of such a construction, we highlight its role in silencing the topic of child sexual abuse within this immigrant community as well as its impact on attitudes towards professional mental health services. We contend that our framework, the idealized cultural identities model on help-seeking and child sexual abuse, provides a unique analytical model for clinicians and researchers to understand how South Asian Americans process, experience, and react to child sexual abuse.     

Economic design of quick switching sampling system for resubmitted lots

This paper proposes a quick switching sampling system for the inspection of attributes quality characteristics for resubmitted lots. The optimal parameters for both fraction non conforming items and fraction non conformities of the proposed sampling system are determined using an optimization procedure so that producer’s risk and consumer’s risk are simultaneously satisfied. Tables are also constructed for the selection of parameters for specified AQL and LQL. The advantage of the proposed plan over the existing plan is discussed and illustrate. An economic design of the proposed sampling system is also discussed and shown that the proposed sampling system has minimum total cost and average total inspection compared to other existing sampling plans.     

The idealized cultural identities model on help-seeking and child sexual abuse: a conceptual model for contextualizing perceptions and experiences of South Asian Americans

In this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary framework to study perceptions of child sexual abuse and help-seeking among South Asians living in the United States. We integrate research on social marginality, intersectionality, and cultural psychology to understand how marginalized social experience accentuates South Asian immigrants' desire to construct a positive self-identity. Using model minority ideology as an example of such a construction, we highlight its role in silencing the topic of child sexual abuse within this immigrant community as well as its impact on attitudes towards professional mental health services. We contend that our framework, the idealized cultural identities model on help-seeking and child sexual abuse, provides a unique analytical model for clinicians and researchers to understand how South Asian Americans process, experience, and react to child sexual abuse.     

Essentialism, Culture, and Power: Representations of Social Class

This article argues that beliefs about social class are influenced by power and social location. Using an essentialist theory of power this study explores the asymmetries in the representations of social class among Brahmins ( N = 99) and Dalits (former "Untouchables," N = 100) in India. The results show that a significantly higher number of Brahmins believed that a poor man's brain transfer to a rich man would not affect his actions, whereas they believed the poor man's actions would be affected by the brain transplant from the rich man. Dalits did not selectively endorse essentialist notions of identity. The implications of the findings are discussed in conjunction with current empowerment and affirmative action programs for Dalits in India .     

Efficient computation of location depth contours by methods of computational geometry

The concept of location depth was introduced as a way to extend the univariate notion of ranking to a bivariate configuration of data points. It has been used successfully for robust estimation, hypothesis testing, and graphical display. The depth contours form a collection of nested polygons, and the center of the deepest contour is called the Tukey median. The only available implemented algorithms for the depth contours and the Tukey median are slow, which limits their usefulness. In this paper we describe an optimal algorithm which computes all bivariate depth contours in O(n ²) time and space, using topological sweep of the dual arrangement of lines. Once these contours are known, the location depth of any point can be computed in O(log² n) time with no additional preprocessing or in O(log n) time after O(n ²) preprocessing. We provide fast implementations of these algorithms to allow their use in everyday statistical practice.     

Culture,Son Preference,and Beliefs About Masculinity

We examined whether endorsing hyper‐masculine attitudes positively related to the psychological well‐being of adolescent boys (N=233) in an extreme son preference community, in Tamilnadu, India. A survey with masculinity and measures of psychological well‐being was administered. We predicted that endorsement of masculinity would positively relate to personal strength, academic achievement, and positive psychological outcomes. Using regression analyses, we found that greater endorsement of masculinity predicted lower self‐reported depression (b=?.48, p<.001), lower internalized shame (b=?.48, p<.001), higher academic performance (b=.15, p<.05), and higher personal strength (b=.43, p<.001). We discuss the relevance of our findings for developing interventions to combat extreme female neglect.     

Phase Type Distributions with Finite Support

This research is motivated by the fact that many random variables of practical interest have a finite support. For fixed a < b, we consider the distribution of a random variable X = (a + Ymod(b ? a)), where Y is a phase type (PH) random variable. We demonstrate that as we traverse for Y the entire set of PH distributions (or even any subset thereof like Coxian that is dense in the class of distributions on [0, ∞)), we obtain a class of matrix exponential distributions dense in (a, b). We call these Finite Support Phase Type Distributions (FSPH) of the first kind. A simple example shows that though dense, this class by itself is not very efficient for modeling; therefore, we introduce (and derive the EM algorithms for) two other classes of finite support phase type distributions (FSPH). The properties of denseness, connection to Markov chains, the EM algorithm, and ability to exploit matrix-based computations should all make these classes of distributions attractive not only for applied probability but also for a much wider variety of fields using statistical methodologies.     

Developing of a new system of skip-lot reinspection schemes

The skip-lot sampling plans are widely used in industries for quality inspection of products in order to reduce the sampling costs and inspection efforts when products have good quality history. Also, the skip-lot sampling plan concept is sound and useful and it is economically advantageous to use the skip-lot approach in the design of sampling plans. Thus, the skip-lot sampling plans are useful to minimize the cost of the inspection particularly in costly and destructive testing. Hence, a new system of skip-lot sampling plans designated as SkSP-2-R plan is developed in this article by incorporating the idea of resampling procedure in the skip-lot sampling plans of type SkSP-2. A Markov chain formulation and derivation of performance measures for this new plan are presented. The properties and advantages of the SkSP-2-R plan are studied with single sampling plan as the reference plan. The response-to-change characteristics of the SkSP-2-R plan are also investigated, based on the average run length.     

A quadratically convergent algorithm for first passage time distributions in the Markov-modulated Brownian motion

A Markov-modulated Brownian motion (MMBM) is a substantial generalization of the classical Brownian Motion and is obtained by allowing the Brownian parameters to be modulated by an underlying Markov chain of environments. As with Brownian Motion, the time-dependent analysis of the MMBM becomes easy once the first passage times between levels are determined. However, in the MMBM those distributions cannot be obtained explicitly, and we need efficient algorithms to compute them. In this article, we provide a powerful approach based on approximating the MMBM with a sequence of scaled Markov-modulated fluid flows without Brownian components that weakly converge to the MMBM. Our main result is a Riccati equation for an associated matrix of transforms that satisfies conditions for the Newton scheme to have quadratic convergence and thus yields a very practical tool. The solution of that Riccati equation determines needed first passage times in the MMBM without much additional work. The success of our approach, which is based essentially on first-order fluid flows and a stochastic limit process, is argued to be due to the way we have isolated certain terms involving the quadratic variation effects of the Brownian. As an illustration of our algorithm, we present a numerical example of time-dependent results for a MMBM considered by Asmussen for which he determined (only) the eventual first return probabilities which we use here as an accuracy check.