Question

there are many issues that can be addressed when performing a RCA. Assuming that there is a problem of appointment wait times at a physician's office setting, please share your thoughts and experiences on how you would address this issue using the RCA concept, plus describe which techniques you might apply and why.

Answer 1

RCA is root cause analysis which is done to find the basic cause of any issue, when that cause for the bug or issue is found, the aim is to resolve the same on urgent basis so that any similar issue is not reflected going forward. Also there is no doubt in the fact it is not that straight forward to perform RCA, there could be many issues as backtracking could be difficult, the synchronisation could be difficult, to trace the paths could be difficult and also primary feedback from the stakeholders could be difficult.

This appointment wait times issue can be resolved by backtracking and hit and trial wherein it can be seen that if we reduce the number of people or increase the number of hours what change could happen and accordingly actions can be taken. Pareto chart and 5 whys can be used which means that 80% of the damage is caused by 20% of the problems and hence to get to the root of the issue, 20% of the problems are to be tracked and seen.