A new Slop University research poster recovers the observed interval between dental check-ups at 14 suburban practices and finds a recall adherence rate that improves while the intervals it stands for lengthen.
Five years of appointment records from 14 suburban practices show the reminder window moving forward with every deferral
Two clicks in a practice management system move a patient’s next reminder forward. Nothing else about the appointment changes, including the way it is counted.
Adherent at Any Interval, released today by the School of Continuous Improvement, follows that action through five years of appointment records at 14 suburban dental practices: 6,418 patients, 21,904 recall episodes, and the recall adherence rate the group reports against.
Reported adherence rose from 71.4 per cent to 88.2 across the five years. The observed gap between consecutive check-ups lengthened over the same period, and lengthens with each recorded deferral: a median of 6.9 months where none was logged, 16.8 where three or more were. Recomputed against a fixed anniversary window, adherence in the final year is 53.9 per cent.
Nobody moved the standard. The standard was written to move, and it has been doing that quietly for five years inside a system that logs it as an ordinary reschedule.
— Dr Joost Nwosu, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Continuous Improvement
The records arrived as scheduled exports and carried no clinical content: appointment timestamps, reminder states and deferral events only. Stratification and window definitions were lodged before extraction, the discipline the School’s measurement work now defaults to.
“The practices handed over their recall queues on the understanding that nobody’s care was being audited, and none was,” said Dr Ingeborg Nwachukwu, Lecturer and Convenor of Capability Sprints. “The window was the object.”
Slop University files the work under upkeep rather than discovery: a definition read once against the interval it is asked to stand for.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.2y2sev.