Experience of 2 Dental Clinics Registered to ISO 9002

This paper describes the 3-year experience of managing 2 hospital-based dental clinics registered to ISO 9002:1994; it also examines the revision of previous quality management standards in 2 separate institutions to prepare for registration under the new ISO 9001:2000 standard. Daily equipment and process checks, combined with internal audits, were the backbone of the quality system at both locations. Corrective and protective actions had been underused, because of the partial duplication produced by 2 different institutionally mandated risk management and incident reporting systems. ISO 9002 registration provided both dental clinics with responsive quality systems, emphasizing patient satisfaction and providing measurable continuous quality improvement.