Five Pillars for Ensuring Send-out Quality That Every Lab Should Know

PILLAR 1 Sending Out: Ensure specimens are sent out on time and at the right temperature. ✔ Review all pending reports daily to ensure that specimens that should have gone out have departed on time. PILLAR 2 Result Entry: Enter results as soon as they arrive and utilize interfaces whenever possible. ✔ Consolidate to an interfaced vendor to greatly reduce the number of manual results.   ✔ For manual results: Implement a two-step process with bins labelled “To Be Performed” (initial entry) and “To Be Verified” (final approval/completion). Keep bins separated by feasible space, and colour coordinate bins to prevent accidental misplacements. PILLAR 3 Overdue Pending: Track delayed results and communicate to physicians. ✔ Create a reporting mechanism to track past inquiries. ✔ If referral lab sends a notification that results will be delayed, communicate this delay to the ordering clinician. PILLAR 4 Billing: Track vendor invoices and monitor pricing and contracts. PILLAR 5 Test Consolidation with Leakage: Determine if a requested referral test is being performed in house. ✔ Enlist help from medical director to create standards to ensure testing is being sent to the best lab for patient care.  ✔ Monitor monthly utilization reports to determine which send-out tests to build in the interface. Source: Clinical Laboratory News, January 2014 Volume 40, Number 1 www.aacc.org