BUSINESS SENSE
BY TIM THOELECKE, INOUT LABS SOPs Are Not Just For The Big Guys DAILY OPENING AND CLOSING PROCEDURES
OPEN PROCEDURES q Open office, unlock front door, turn on lights, computers. q Adjust thermostat if necessary (68 deg winter, 72 deg summer) q Adjust blinds if needed. q Adjust sign-‐in register to cover previous visitors. q Log on to Pipeline Deals, Google Calendar, Gmail, i3Screen, and Beacon q Check voice mail and return calls as needed. q Check emails and reply/forward as needed. q Review open test (Purple) folder. q Check for drug test results and deliver as appropriate. q Check Beacon for lab test results. q Disseminate test results according to patient direction; document in Purple Folder that results were sent
q File as appropriate q Make sure that sign-‐in register has enough paper and file any sheets that are full and that privacy cover hides names.
q Check for faxes and respond as appropriate. q Spot clean, file and organize work areas, soap and towels, bathrooms and labs as needed. q Confirm lab samples from previous day were picked up. q Do QA on refrigerator. q Water plants as needed.
CLOSING PROCEDURES
q If not on auto-‐pickup, call lab(s) for courier. q Place samples with orders in Quest and LabCorp lock boxes for pick up; if necessary, put in cold/heat pack.
Fridays
q If necessary, put samples into biohazard refrigerator or freezer as required. q Complete and package FedEx or UPS specimens including address, seals. q If necessary. turn thermostat to 60 deg. In winter, 80 in summer. q Make sure coffee maker is off and rinse out carafe/thermos. q Stock cups and supplies for the next day. q Deliver FedEx and UPS packages to overnight drop box as necessary. q Turn off all computers, lights, closed sign, close blinds and lock doors. Night light in back stays on. q Clean and sterilize lab; clean bathrooms; wipe surfaces; disinfect
q Empty trash and vacuum q In addition to daily cleaning, mop and vacuum floors and empty trash cans.
portant as small businesses are to the U.S. economy, many of these firms suffer. Why? Mostly because the owners are simply over- whelmed by just about everything from making sure there’s enough inventory to filling in for sick employees. Te result is stressed out employees and unhappy clients.
S
Take a page out of the big business playbook. Walk into any McDonald’s, anywhere in the world, and you will have roughly the same experience. Whether in Chicago, Hong Kong, London or Tree Rivers, Michigan, your order will be handled the same way and your order will be prepared identically. McDonald’s is not about burgers. Most burger restaurants have
much beter food. McDonald’s is all about process. Employees are more-or-less interchangeable. You don’t have to have easily replaceable employees—or even a lot of them—but if you think about your business the same way an established franchise does, the benefits are many. If you have been at it long enough you already have processes
IN OUT LABS OPERATIONS MANUAL 18
in place, though they may be unstructured and undocumented. Different team members may have their own ways of doing things. Tese processes gain a lot more leverage when you write them down. When you go through the exercise of documenting your standard operating procedures (SOPs), it helps you to determine the areas in which you can approve processes to do things beter and/or more efficiently. When you are beter, faster and more consistent, you waste less mental energy and you will have less stress—and your clients will be beter served. Te Department of Transportation published a document
for collection sites called the DOT’s 10 Steps to Collection Site Security, which is a perfect example of writen operating proce- dures. It’s the “Cliff’s Notes” to the collection process. If everyone follows those steps, then every donor will have roughly the same experience, and collections become automatic for the collector. And we also have 49 CFR Part 40 to rely on when things don’t go as planned. When we get a shy bladder, or the temperature is out of range, we really don’t have any big decisions to make. Part 40 tells us what to do. Te rules are the rules, however, these “rules” are not part of your training program and/or standard operating procedures. It empowers the collector to make a decision in deal- ing with a situation that may not meet the requirements already established in the testing regulations.
24 datia focus winter 2015
mall businesses are responsible for countless innovations and, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, make up more than 99.7 percent of all employers. Yet, as im-
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