Evoke Development

Quest Diagnostics

Overview

Evoke Development was contacted by a regional processing lab at Quest Diagnostics because the specimen processors were not meeting aggressive performance metrics from the Corporate office. An internal analysis showed that a high percentage of the errors were due to transposed digits and omitted data fields and occurred when the processors were transferring data from a source document to the computer system. Although the organization had implemented process and system improvements, they also realized they needed to improve the performance of the individual processors. The organization wanted to fix the errors at the front end of the process rather than attempting to find and correct the data errors after they had occurred.

I review many documents for accuracy and these techniques will help me catch errors.

Director & Six Sigma Blackbelt - Quest Diagnostics

Services Provided

• Accuracy Training
• Accuracy Training Train-the-Trainer

Results

Performance metrics for the specific department covering the 12 days before Accuracy Training showed a daily average of 41.6 defects for the department. Comparable data for an eight day sample taken three weeks after Accuracy Training showed a daily average of 12.7 defects.  Management was pleased with a 70% reduction in the daily average number of defects with "on-the-job" data. This percentage improvement was higher than the 58% reduction in errors the department achieved during the course and measured with the pre- and post-course assessments.

Note: Many specific analysis details were intentionally omitted from this summary.