Improving the Quality of Clinical Dental Services using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) Approach and Interpretive-Structural Modeling (ISM)

Introduction: The expansion of activities and performance areas of organizations, modern management issues mean that organizations are no longer satisfied with success in only a limited number of indicators. Mathematical models thus formed and gradually are developed for the assessment of organizations and provide the right tools. This study is conducted to provide a model for improving the quality of dental services in uncertain settings. Materials and methods: The study population in this study consists of two groups. The first group consisted of all the patients with at least one visit to the dental clinic of Guilan University of Medical Sciences in Rasht, 422 of whom were randomly selected through convenience sampling. These data were used for the IPA. The second group of experts consisted of 20 organizational directors and senior experts selected for the localization of the quality of services the dental clinic and the ISM. This applied descriptive-analytical study uses the Fuzzy Delphi method for selecting the components of the quality of services, the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of these components, and the Interpretive-Structural Modeling (ISM) for improving the components of the quality of services by prioritizing the effectiveness of the factors. Results: The dental clinic of Guilan University has to pay immediate attention to including providing services as promised, the delivery of services with care, timely responding, the personnel’s greater efforts for solving the patients’ problems, a consistent quality of services, the speed of services, in order to improve the quality of its services. Conclusion: The ISM showed that there are six levels of influential factors, with the two variables of “providing services as promised” and “equipment and technology” acting as the cornerstone of the model that should be emphasized first and foremost for the system to begin functioning.