EDUCATION :: POINT-OF-CARE TESTING
Integrate your point-of-care testing for gains in cost savings, staff productivity, & patient care
Kim Futrell, MT(ASCP), MSHI P
oint-of-care (POC) testing, in the appropriate patient care scenarios, provides significant benefits to patient care. The biggest advantage to POC testing is that by providing faster
access to test results, diagnosis and subsequent treatment is expedited. However, to harness that rapid turnaround time (TAT), results must be captured at the point of care and made immediately available to the caregivers responsible for taking action based on those results.
POC testing growth spurred by the pandemic Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, POC testing was already experiencing significant growth and broader acceptance. With a renewed focus on improving population health at more af- fordable costs, the case for POC testing is strong, especially in situations where a quick TAT can have a profound impact on downstream costs and patient outcomes. With the pandemic came a greater recognition of the value of POC testing and the importance of rapid test results along with an increased demand for reliable testing methodologies. Vendors are responding to this demand with improved methodologies and interfaceable devices, which are also driving adoption.
Benefits of data capture at the POC To achieve the real-time benefits associated with POC testing, not only does the test have to be performed at the point of care, but also the results need to be electronically captured and
integrated into the patient’s chart, making results immediately available to the care team. When this is the case, POC testing can improve the efficiency of providers and potentially improve patient outcomes.1 Because POC testing sites can be widely scattered across a healthcare campus, it is important to have a robust POC testing management system to capture important test information and manage regulatory compliance.2
Ideally, the POC testing program
can be efficiently and effectively monitored from a remote location. Few healthcare organizations have been able to successfully integrate their POC test results into their Laboratory Information System (LIS) and Electronic Health Record (EHR). Decentralization of POC testing makes connectivity more challenging and contrib- utes to the fact that only 10% of POC test results are electronically integrated.3
The full value of POC testing is only seen when those results are immediately accessible in the patient’s EHR.
Opportunity for significant time & money savings As a primary benefit to the laboratory, capturing POC results at the testing location can save laboratory professionals a significant amount of time when compared to the time it takes to manually type results into the LIS or EHR. Time saved translates into cost savings and efficiency improvements for the entire organization. Below are two examples of integrated POC testing saving technologists’ time: • Integrated bedside glucose improves lab productivity Prior to integrating their bedside glucose testing, a healthcare organization in Nebraska was manually entering thousands of bedside glucose results. Laboratory staff were spending a significant amount of time writing down results at the bedside, traveling to the lab to manually enter results, and performing the required verification of those manually entered results. Implementing a connectivity solution eliminated inefficiencies and errors associated with manual entry. Their laboratory saved more than 700 hours annually that staff can now use to focus on other tasks. With this example, the potential savings within a large healthcare facility add up to a substantial amount. For instance, a conservative estimate of annual bedside glucose testing volume in a large teaching hospital approaches $70,000 per year.4
this is equivalent to 1,167 hours of staff time; multiplied by an average Medical Assistant (MA) hourly wage of $18 per hour,5
If each glucose takes one minute to manually enter, Benefits of data capture at the POC 24 JUNE 2022
MLO-ONLINE.COM
this equates to about $21,000 per year spent in labor costs associated with the manual entry of bedside glucose testing. Calculated using the average Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS) hourly wage of $36 per hour, it equates to more than $42,000 per year attributed to typing in glucose results. • POC testing connectivity saves more than 3,300 hours of tech time Prior to implementing a connectivity solution, POC testing operators at a large hospital in Ohio were manually typing results into the EHR or scanning instrument printouts for urinalysis (UA) testing. On average, manually entering results took 2.5 minutes because a UA contains ten or more components to enter; therefore, for every 24 UAs, entering results took an hour of tech time. To put this in perspective, their UA volume is approximately 80,000 per
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