Supporting clinicians to redesign the care pathway
Livework helped one team of special care dental professionals to achieve more efficient working practices by ‘breaking the mould’ of the current care model. The clinical team were trained and coached in the service design methodology whilst putting into practice changes to service delivery.
Challenge
Can clinic utilisation be improved by understanding why customers Do Not Attend (DNAs) their appointments and redesigning the care pathway?
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Community Dental Services is a ‘referral’ dental service providing specialist care to patients most in need. Patients are referred to the service because they would find it difficult to receive their care from a High Street dentist, perhaps owing to a disability, learning difficulty or behavioural condition, such as dental anxiety. The dental team care for some of the most vulnerable in society. They pride themselves on being able to manage almost any dental emergency or condition.
Approach
Integrating customer needs into community dental care services.
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Livework worked collaboratively with the dental team to understand and contextualise into operational service priorities the needs of patients and carers.
The dental team received training in the service design methodology. They distilled the customer insights into a new service blueprint. Livework provided coaching to the team to complete two service prototypes.
The team quickly became passionate about exploring new ways of delivering the service. Using the service blueprint, the team ‘fast tracked’ some of the ideas to meet the challenges of Covid-19.
Outcome
Continually explore new ways of meeting customer expectations in community dental services.
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The dental team used our customer centric design approach to explore new ways of delivering dental services.
The new service blueprint enabled the team to conceptualise change, continually explore customer needs and safely explore ideas in a highly pressurised clinic setting.
The team advocate for the service design approach to be rolled out to other clinics, and to develop a deeper understanding of service design in-house. Service design approach allows a company strategy to be informed by operational experiences.
“Working in partnership with Livework has been an absolutely enjoyable experience. As a dental service, we have been equipped with immense knowledge on service redesign in order to improve outcomes and maximise efficiency through prototyping and developing new patient pathways.”
– Lorraine Mattis |