Mailroom Project

Project Background

A healthcare service provider was struggling with processing incoming mail. The service provider was managing HSA accounts for individuals and claims and enrollment forms were mailed into the organization. An early attempt was made to have the mail managed by an external mailroom services organization, however; the time to process, accuracy, and costs to process the mail to not what management had expected. To remedy the situation a project was created to set up an internal processing department.

This one off project needed to perform better than what was being contracted and the costs needed to be less as well. Fortunately, the company had available physical space and the computer and printing hardware required to build the processing center. After and evaluation period of benchmarking the current system and collaborating with a contracted six sigma professional, a plan was devised to build the center, staff it, and measure the results.

The final result was that the mail was being processed 40% quicker with 80% less errors. Over time and through the utilization of process improvement the six sigma performance was ultimately achieved enabling the service provider to offer more in the way of service level performance guarantees.