Lean Six Sigma Project

Norwood dental DMAIC

• Define
• Measure
• Analyze
• Improve
• Control

DEFINE

What should We Improve?

• Lab Case Management?
• Sterilization?
• Scheduling?
• Marketing?
• Treatment Planning?

Norwood Dental Care teams created a charter to address the problem of cancelled appointments because of the huge cost of poor quality.

COPQ

The goal is to improve the process to increase production and serve more patients!

Define

Untitled Slide

Untitled Slide

Define

Define

Define SIPOC

• S - Staff Admin Hygiene Dental Assistant
• I - Dentrix Software and Schedule
• P - Source input from pt, staff takes request and makes appt u
• O - Appointment Scheduled
• C - Staff/ Patient

Measure

VOC and KANO

Untitled Slide

Measure CTQ's

• Answer phones on 2nd ring
• Need more than one hour to schedule appointment
• Patient gets a rescheduled appointment
• All appointments canceled in
• Have options for contacting office

Measure

Measure Benchmarks

• Schedule all appointments scheduled in hygiene department that are canceled in less than 24 hours

Measure validate

• By recording four parameters staff is able to calculate the efficacy of the current status accurately. The four parameters are as follows:

Measure Key Metrics

• # of appointments canceled
• # of appointments canceled
• Cost of lost appointments
• Value of saved appointments
• # of missed calls causing loss appt

Measure validate

• Filled Appointment, Rescheduled Patient
• Filled Appointment, Did Not Reschedule
• Did Not Fill Appointment, Rescheduled Patient
• Did Not Fill Appointment, Did Not Reschedule

Measure bottom line

• A 16% unfilled appt rate
• 768 appts at $300
• Gap of $230400!!!
• 300 patients not helped!!!

Analyze

• We need to dig into data
• Y=f(X)
• Find root cause
• Validate!!

Analyze The 5 Whys?

• #1 Why are appts not filled if cancelled
• Answer: No attempt was made or attempt failed

Analyze the 5 whys?

• #2. Why was no attempt made or did the attempt fail?
• Answer: Team members were not focused on this as a ctq

Analyze the 5 whys?

• #3 Why did team members not focus on this as a CTQ?
• Answer: They were not trained properly

Analyze the 5 whys?

• #4 Why were they not trained properly?
• Answer: There was no way to train them

Analyze the 5 whys?

• #5 Why was there no way to train them?
• Final Answer: There was no PROCESS!

Analyze

Analyze

Improve

Improve

Improve

Control

Control

• By June our goal was met
• By July we exceeded our goal of reducing total loss of 16% to below 8%
• We used a Shewart Chart to track this

Control

Summary of results

• Cost of implementation $1000
• Goal was met and exceeded in 4 months from charter launch
• Over $120,000 in recouped appointments
• Over 150 more patients helped