Delivery of services to a patient has to be given with an acceptable measure of quality that can be monitored through the patient's satisfaction. The objective of this work was to innovate processes eliminating waste and non value-added work in processes done at the Imaging Department in the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER for its Spanish acronym) in Mexico City, to decrease the time a patient spends in a study and increase satisfaction. This innovation will be done using Lean Six Sigma tools and applied in a pilot program.

We propose an index to prioritize preventive maintenance for medical equipment. Our index considers seven variables: type of equipment, equipment function, maintenance requirements, calibration, equipment age, equipment location, and equipment hazards. We developed a mathematical model using these variables, and its result is interpreted as an index of equipment maintenance priority. The numerical output of the index was classified into three categories: high, medium, and low priority. We proposed our index model to technical staff at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico as a protocol for scheduling appropriate preventive maintenance for medical equipment during the year. The index was tested in a sample of 16 different medical equipment. Our model provides a guide to define the priority and the number of preventive maintenance routines required for medical equipment per year.

The purpose of this work was to improve the drug dispensing process at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases of Mexico by applying the six sigma methodology, identifying the non-value added activities as well as the areas of opportunity, in order to make proposals to ensure the supply of prescription drugs to the patient in a timely manner. Seven variables were defined and three indicators were generated, which were implemented in three clinical services of the Institute to measure the current performance of the drug distribution process. With the obtained results, a proposed set of eight improvements were subsequently implemented in a pilot program.

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The scope of this paper is to evaluate the impact of PACS implementation in radiographic film (RF) savings at the Imaging Department at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico City, considering both Computed Tomography (CT) and Computed Radiography (CR) modalities. The PACS at the INER was installed in 2006, and the CT and CR have been operating entirely digitally since then. Therefore, the document evaluate three different periods, before the arriving of the PACS (2005), during the PACS installation (2006) and after PACS (2007). A set of indicators were designed to measure and visualize the impact of the PACS in the RF savings. Two templates are provided to define and to apply each one of the indicators proposed.