Challenges of the modern dental clinic
The Mühldorf am Inn dental clinic combines all the components of a comprehensive treatment under one roof. The entire treatment process, from cost planning, through treatment in the specialized departments and in our own dental laboratory to billing, are all mapped in the rooms of the dental clinic. The recording completes that big range of services.
In addition to optimizing the central treatment processes and the associated challenges, the team at the Mühldorf am Inn dental clinic has also successfully set further goals in recent years. On the one hand, the structure grew with the growth of the organization – i.a. further developed through the integration of a foremen and guild laboratory and thus a second location as well as the establishment of an MVZ. It was also necessary to adapt the certified quality management system to the new ISO standard 9001: 2015 and to implement the basic data protection regulation in all processes. Particular attention was always paid to the careful development of the team and the retention of employees.
Implementation & test phase
The Mühldorf am Inn dental clinic was one of the first dental companies to start the 30-day test phase with medikit in mid-May 2014. The introduction of the new tool was deliberately carried out in the entrepreneurially courageous and successful tradition of the innovative company in the course of the profound changes mentioned. In order to optimize the coordination of all process steps under one roof, the employees used almost all available medikit tools from the start.
An important part of the optimization with the help of medikit was the complete digitization of the QM handbook. This was already available in high quality as files on the in-house server, but in the daily business it was hardly used due to the cumbersome operation of conventional IT systems and the updating of the content was like a Sisyphean task, which was also parked by the hopeless QM team. The documented knowledge and the associated potential to increase quality lay due to the lack of a powerful medium for this content.
With medikit we overcome the really problematic limits of verbal communication for a company of our size and create a quality management as a team. As the owner, I am particularly pleased to be able to stay in close contact with my team even in hectic everyday life thanks to the modern communication options in medikit.
It had become clear to those responsible that a centralized and relatively static QM process could no longer do justice to the dynamics of a modern medical company. With medikit, a handbook based on the “wiki principle” was implemented and all QM-relevant processes were transferred from theory to digital practice using the diverse task tool in medikit.
Successes of the new communication platform
Dynamic knowledge management
Helpful details in medikit such as the fully automatic revision security as well as the possibility of precisely defining the recipients of each article opened up the full potential of dynamic knowledge management for the team for the first time. Thanks to the simple operation and the fully automatic distribution of the information about changes to all those concerned in connection with the version comparison by mouse click and the automatic read confirmation, every improvement could now be firmly anchored in the team in no time at all. The possibility of participating in this process from home or on the go with the appropriate apps on smartphones and tablets contributes significantly to the success of the new approach.
medikit offers an easy-to-use handbook structure with an ingenious search function, ensures a comprehensible, transparent communication system for all employees and helps to significantly reduce the administrative effort required to comply with the requirements of the standard.
Everyone is included
The effect that the employees gratefully accepted these new opportunities and so gradually assumed responsibility for the content was perceived as particularly positive. The responsibility for the QM system was distributed over many shoulders and the unpopular QM became a positive process in which everyone makes a contribution within the scope of their possibilities. In teamwork with well over 30 different authors, for example, the handbook has been expanded from 400 to almost 2,000 articles since it was introduced. An impressive 50 percent of this wealth of knowledge is updated over the course of 12 months and thus regularly brought up to date.
Digital process management
Based on this solid knowledge management, a large number of clear and individual communication channels could be established within a very short time and the quality of processes could be sustainably increased. With medikit, for example, numerous processes were digitized with the help of the task tool, e.g. Daily checklists, device management, hygiene lists, billing, training or marketing processes and even medical consultations. With the repair tool, the previously inappropriately complex processing of repairs could be quickly and efficiently arranged thanks to the integrated automatisms. And the latest developments in the medikit tool, such as the automatic monitoring of the temperature in the refrigerators with the help of the interface to the cloud-based temperature sensor provider Koolzone, make a reliable contribution: If there is an undesirable temperature increase, e.g. because the refrigerator door was not closed properly, the sensor reacts immediately and sends a warning message in the medikit to a defined group of recipients. This means that you can react immediately and avoid costly consequences.
medikit makes the team work
These improvements not only increased the quality of treatment. The quality of work for employees has also been further improved. medikit tools such as the calendar, in which well over 300 appointments are coordinated internally or with visitors every year, or the ideas module also contribute to this positive development by increasing transparency and actively involving employees. The dental clinic’s medikit brings dozens of ideas to light every year on topics such as patient service, cost savings or environmental protection, almost three quarters of which can be implemented. The team of the dental laboratories that work at their own location can be integrated into all processes thanks to medikit and the employees are fully integrated.
The Mühldorf dental clinic wanted primarily an optimization of the work structures including the manual revolution, a strengthening of the sustainable employee loyalty and an improvement of the reparation processes.
