Frisktandvård was introduced in 2007 by Folktandvården (the national dental service) for the inhabitants of the Västra Götaland region.
Frisktandvård is a form of dental insurance that involves the patient paying a fixed monthly fee for dental care, regardless of the services the patient needs. Every individual knows what their dental care will cost, thus avoiding expensive nasty surprises.
Lotta Sundelin was the project manager of the introduction project, the aim of which was to unite the region in a common model. The steering group initially appointed realised that there were major gains to be made from hiring external project support. However, Lotta could not see the point of this to begin with:
“My first thought was that I did not understand why we should spend a lot of money on external assistance that we did not need, in my opinion. Why couldn’t we pull this off on our own? But in all truth we had too little experience of working in projects, especially projects of this size with high efficiency requirements. We quickly realised how big the project was and the complexities that entailed. Ekan helped us create structure in the project and their experience and knowledge of project management was decisive. It was incredibly difficult to put together the pieces of this big puzzle in terms of timetables, activity plans, etc. Without the support of Ekan it would have been extremely difficult to complete the project.”