The growth in pathology lab instruments, other advancements, and clinical practices have transformed and become more receptive to newer technologies. In this changing era, the diagnostics sector too has adopted innovative methods to increase pathology productivity. This brings a promise of quality, and reliability and enhances productivity for the lab.
Here are some significant lab improvement ideas that can provide simplified lab operations. They can also improve performance and offer you revenue benefits over time. Read ahead and know why they are much required for your lab.
Always Use Unique IDs for Patients With Reporting System
The growing number of returning patients and substantial growth in the number of new patients speak about your lab recognition and performance. In order to measure such profitable aspects of your lab, you must have the right data to identify your patients. Using unique IDs you have the ability to identify unique patients, with growth & revenue per patient correctly.
Unique patient ID is an effective way to log patient information and keep track. Hence, useful at the time for monitoring progress. Pathology software usually comes with the such reporting system. This system auto-generates unique user IDs for patients using their contact details or any other set of useful information.
The reporting system not only eliminates the uncertainty of data management but also prevents duplication of work. As a result, you elevate pathology lab performance & growth significantly. By indexing these IDs, labs can store a history of patient records. These records can be used later to study clinical progress or the health history of revisiting patients.
Maximize Pathology Lab Productivity
With the optimization of laboratory processes, faster delivery options, and improved pathology laboratory instruments and lab measuring equipment, we also need better ways to manage patient records. A digital copy of meaningful information is easier to maintain access to, update and share within seconds than paper records.
And, that’s not it, users get the ability to have an organized way of handling information. Better tracking and analysis of all in-and-out information flow adds more benefits. So monitoring your financial data within the company’s network is easier. You can implement these processes easily with a lab reporting system or pathology lab automation to enhance pathology lab performance.
Having one single system to manage your Patients, Reports & Accounts, you can now set rules & controls on how each aspect affects the other. Simple controls like restricting report access for unpaid reports can significantly reduce leakages.
Digitization of data is also cost-effective, easy to deliver, and demands comparatively less space on storage. Hence, digitizing your lab & keeping all laboratory data indexed helps staff significantly. It helps them shift their focus to more valuable processes than data retrieval and maintenance tasks.
Streamline Sample Processing In Medical Laboratory
Sample management process is very important but also a complex part of lab management. During the sample management process, even the slightest mistake alters operational output; affecting the end result on the whole. Misplaced samples, wrong/incomplete data entries, lost samples, etc. are a few of the recurrent mistakes that tend to happen while handling a huge volume every day.
Sample accessioning as a process, paired with a well-implemented software system, allows you to identify samples and simplify your entire sample management process. It involves using barcode labels right from the time of sample collection, or at the time of accession. By tagging samples and segregating them into categories, accessioning improves lab performance in more than one way. Soon after labeling, the barcode acts as a tracker for your sample. Be it collected or outsourced, you can track and locate your sample with such tags. The lab can increase pathology productivity significantly with this change.
Simply with a barcode reader or by scanning, your machine will identify the ID, without requiring any human interference at the time of processing. With streamlined sample accessioning that has enormous benefits, you can save processing time and improve accuracy at operations.
Automation & Machine Interfacing With LIMS
Laboratory process improvement ideas like machine interfacing are in vogue for the past decade. Pathology labs prefer the LIMS interface as it serves as a technology that can reduce human efforts and produce results free of any error. Despite that, many processes like passing test commands, entering values, etc. are handled by staff members working at the lab, thereby, being prone to human errors.
Machine interfacing adds an advantage to your lab business. It prevents human intervention at the time of sample processing in the laboratory, producing end results free from human-induced errors. Although to generate accurate reports, ensure that you go with bi-directional machine interfacing.
Bi-Directional interfacing is preferred as compared to uni-directional interfacing in sample processing in the laboratory, as it has almost zero chances of human interference. By interfacing machines with your LIMS, you get quality output in a lesser amount of time. With the deployment of leading lab automation software your labs can witness a proven increase in revenue by 3x.
Increase Pathology Productivity With Pathology Lab Inventory Management Software
Another challenge that laboratories recurrently face is to perfectly manage inventories without increasing the amount of wastage or unnecessary expenditure. Failing to keep a check on stock items is among the many causes that result in wastage; especially those items that are wasted that are highly perishable. Due to such an invariant issue, labs require effective lab inventory management software.
Lab inventory management software is also available as standalone software or as part of the pathology lab software. By choosing the one that provides a smarter and better way to control and manage stock, you will know the right amount of stock to be planned as well as plan the next order efficiently.
Know why pathology lab inventory management software is better than ERP, excel, or paper management.
Keep Quality Control And Calibration Of Pathology Lab Instruments In Check
The efficiency of your lab depends on how well your machines are functioning. Ensure that you run time-to-time quality checks over them and keep them from causing any errors. Also, keep them well-maintained and calibrated as per standardized formats so that we receive accurate output and keep performance from being affected. A lab automation scheduling software can make this tedious process a breeze.
There are robust Lab Automation Software available today that can address major operational loopholes that influence laboratory performance and improve your lab’s productivity. As these solution-based lab improvement ideas are all-inclusive in a single Laboratory Information Management System, we must look for having them in our lab.
