Around 80% of all diagnoses are based on blood analyses. Doctors waiting for results is often crucial; patients are waiting to hear what treatment is to come consequently suffering unbearable waiting time and occupying expensive bedtime.
In the hospital environment, the waiting time for blood test results can only be reduced by shortening the turn-around-time (TAT), - from the moment when the blood sample has been drawn until the result is available. The turn-around-time is the process from when the sample arrives in the laboratory till the result is available. However, this is not the total turn-around-time (ToTAT).
To get an accurate picture of the turn-around-time we need to focus on the time from when the blood sample is being drawn and till the result is delivered to the patient. Slow transportation time can prolonge the waiting time for the important results and it can have a negative influence on the quality of the samples. When overlooking the processes of transporting the samples to the laboratory and focusing purely on the turn-around-time in the laboratory, the hospitals loose important means to reduce the total turn-around-time.
Hospitals with focus on reducing the total turn-around-time will witness an extreme reduction in their turn-around-time for test results. With modern new technology in the laboratories, the optimization in laboratory turn-around-time is often down to seconds or a few minutes. But, when the focusing on reducing the time from when the sample is drawn until the result is available, the total turn-around-time can be reduced dramatically.
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