Nationally Ranked Pediatric Hospital Lab Challenges the Status Quo and Wins

Project: In hospital labs it is often difficult to balance speed, accuracy, and consistency across processes. Large, unpredictable fluctuations in specimen delivery/receipt tax even well-running, moderately profitable, systems. When streamlining processes, all opportunities should be considered.

A nationally ranked hospital established a project to determine if specimen processing time could be improved. Knowing they were challenging the norm, the lab once again hired TechSolve to assess the opportunity to improve specimen processing time.

The current best practice followed the manufacturer’s recommendation and CAP inspection. It required the centrifuge to spin for 10 minutes at 2500 RPM.

If the specimen spin time could be reduced to less than the recommended manufacturer specs without risking low quality or insufficient volume to the chemistry analyzer, the lab would increase the lab capacity with the same cost basis. It was determined a 25% cycle time reduction at the same cost basis could yield over $350,000 annually.

The TechSolve Healthcare Solutions team focused on the key output and plasma volume and required that any solution presented must maintain the current level of plasma volume while not affecting the quality of the 17 panels on the chemistry analyzer results.

The analysis began with a detailed process map and with data analysis completed using three highly regarded methods: Fishbone Diagram, Anderson-Darling Normality Test, and Two-Sample t-test. Various test runs were performed adjusting RPM speeds and time. Plasma weight confidence intervals were carefully scrutinized.

Results: Feeling confident in the approach and test results, the lab team chose to use the proven five-minute spin time, and work-balancing was used to reduce batch size. This 50% reduction in processing cycle time (with no negative impact on plasma volume/analyzer input) has exceeded all initial cost savings projections with over $700,000 in net margin per year due to increased capacity without the addition of staff or equipment.