Success Stories

Charleston Area Medical Center Relies on Daptiv to Ensure Best Care, Best Practices

Charleston Area Medical Center is West Virginia's premiere medical teaching facility, a non-profit, 919-bed, regional referral center with more than 4,000 employees across three main campuses. Ensuring the best possible care for all those patients and collaborating between departments and between campuses requires careful management of data and information.

Harnessing the Power of Six Sigma

To do that most effectively, CAMC uses Six Sigma, a data-driven methodology which reduces variations among practices, subsequently reducing defects. Within healthcare, a very regulated environment, developing processes and generating an environment with 0% defects is ideal. However, keeping track of all the data and making sure that all parties involved in an initiative had the information at their fingertips was a challenge. The hospital staff was seeking a solution that was flexible enough to work within the detail-driven Six Sigma methodology, and was easy to access and use for the disparate employee base.

After researching and trying products like Primavera TeamPlay® and Microsoft© Project, CAMC discovered Daptiv and was impressed with its client list and robust features and the collaborative capabilities were superior to any others they had come across. Additionally, because it was Web-based, it didn't put the strain on the IT department that Primavera TeamPlay® and Microsoft© Project had and CAMC was able to get started immediately. The company decided to purchase 500 seats to be used throughout the hospital campuses in order to provide structure and improve organization, not only for the Six Sigma teams but other project teams as well, including the IT department.

Ensuring Accountability

Since implementing Daptiv, CAMC has found that they have increased efficiency and accountability through better communication and stronger organization of projects. With Daptiv's document management system, CAMC has a handle on tracking multiple versions of important documents and the hospital staff no longer clogs up the email system by sending attachments back and forth. Additionally, in order to share information across all departments, meetings were constantly scheduled, which left less time for successful execution. Today, the information everyone needs is directly available to them online, thus reducing meetings and planning time, and providing more time for actually executing on projects.

"Charleston Area Medical Center manages many projects across its three campuses and is very rigorous in ensuring that its processes and projects are run to the exacting standards of the Six Sigma methodology," says Steve Cunningham, Six Sigma Black Belt at Charleston Area Medical Center. "Daptiv provides us with a Web-based repository to store all the data associated with our Six Sigma projects, track documents, communicate changes and manage tasks across all projects and teams. By using this product we have made everyone more accountable for their work, enhanced communication and improved the overall organization of information across the board."