Applying Taguchi methods to health care.

PURPOSE: The aim of this article is to show how Taguchi methods can be applied to health care. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The quadratic loss function is at the heart of Taguchi methods. It is a powerful motivator for a quality strategy and can be used to adequately model the loss to society in health care. It also establishes a relationship between cost and variability. Therefore, it can be integrated with the performance and parameters of the design of medical applications. Signal-to-noise ratios give a sense of how close is the performance to the ideal. By maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio, quality-engineering activities can be aimed at identifying near-optimum levels of factors and making quality equal to zero. FINDINGS: This article shows that, when the patients' requirements are consistently met, lower losses can provide an impetus to improve patient satisfaction. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The article outlines areas in health care where Taguchi methods can easily be applied.