Tuesday, March 3, 2020
During the period 2017 - 2019, with the aim of saving time and improving patient flow and treatment, Regional Hospital Viborg installed a total of ten Tempus600 Vita transport systems, which now take care of the transport of samples from the hospital departments and sample delivery unit directly to the automated solution in the laboratory, a process that was previously carried out manually and had been time-consuming.
The laboratory at Regional Hospital Viborg. Photo: Ole Hartmann Schmidt
Danish Regional Hospital Viborg has approximately 350 beds and every year analyses about 900,000 small clinical samples from approximately 450,000 patients, as well as blood samples sent in from GPs.
Using the ten central sending stations, the hospital’s bioanalysts send patients’ blood samples directly from the individual units to the Department of Biochemistry. The transport time is approximately one minute and the system avoids having to batch samples on the way, which previously had to be done when the samples were manually transported. In the new flow, samples are analysed on an ongoing basis and the aim of response times is to have results for all samples from the emergency department and for all samples for critical patients in the hospital within an hour, and results for other samples within 2–4 hours, depending on whether the samples have priority or are routine samples.
The new way of handling samples has created a different workflow in the laboratory and in the departments.
“Today, the clinical departments prioritise their own patients. Clinical departments operate with the definitions critical, prioritised and routing sampling - definitions that can be used in the laboratory. If a patient is critical, the patient is given first priority throughout the whole process. In this way we can predict who will get responded to first,” says Torben Hansen, Chief Bioanalyst, the Department of Biochemistry, Regional Hospital Viborg.
“It’s important to know how the departments treat the patients, to ensure that critical patients, e.g. in relation to the ward round, are given first priority. This therefore requires new work routines and procedures in close collaboration and dialogue between the department and laboratory during the start-up phase, where it’s about setting up work routines and rules between the departments and laboratory, so that you get the agreed flow,” says Torben Hansen.
For the departments this means faster response times for ward rounds and the treatment of patients can be started faster and you avoid wasting time.
“Already after the morning round, when the ward round begins, there are results by nine o’clock in the morning, where previously we needed to wait until 11 o’clock in the morning. This means that the ward round can be completed faster and plans for patients can be organised, so that they can be sent for further examinations. It means we don’t have any wasted time, because we can make decisions and start immediately. It’s much more efficient for treatment and patients,” says Mette Esbjørn, Consultant Medical Unit 1, Regional Hospital Viborg.
The faster response times make a huge difference to outpatients and those region patients who live far away.
“With the new response times, patients can get fast results, avoid long waiting times and even save an extra trip to the hospital. In general, the process has become much more efficient and we can deal with patients within a shift,” says Mette Esbjørn.
ReturnFast response times for blood samples improve patient treatment;
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