Clinical diagnostic testing is an interaction of people and technology performing a complex series of critical tasks in a fast-moving, high-stress environment. Studies suggest that as much as 35% of hospital staff time is spent on wasteful work that adds no value to patients.11 It is the responsibility of management to implement a smooth seamless structure to see that diagnostic testing progresses from the initial order to the final report. If there are glitches and clogs in this process, productivity will be reduced, as will provider and patient satisfaction. The management of people, automation and equipment, materials, environment, and the process is a challenging task for management. Below are seven steps management can do to increase laboratory efficiency.
- Eliminate waste: Waste is defined as anything that does not add value to your work. Some examples of waste are underutilized talent, non-approachable leadership, training failures, extra processing errors, expiration of materials, equipment failures (lack of maintenance), and poor quality management processes. Entire books have been written about how to effectively manage the laboratory, and because each laboratory is unique a detailed discussion of management will not be discussed in this course.
- Empower your team: Management can empower their team to become waste eliminators. Provide incentives to team members to find and eliminate waste.
- Organize your laboratory: One helpful process is implementing 5S in the laboratory. 5S is a Japanese methodology to organize and improve the efficiency of a shared workspace by incorporating seemingly regular tasks such as cleaning, sorting, and re-arranging the surroundings and method of operation within the workspace. 5S consists of five phases or activities with names starting with the letter "S" (sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain) and provides a basic foundation for any organization's Lean initiative for continuous improvement.12
- Track problems by creating a problem tracker system that records problems as they occur along with solutions so it can be used to prevent future problems or provide ready-made solutions.
- Manage information with a laboratory information management system (LIMS) that will track your samples and standardize your protocols. Tracking samples with LIMS from collection through the testing and reporting process eliminates transcription errors, decreases turnaround time, and provides consistency throughout the process.
- Maintenance: Calibrate instruments and perform preventive maintenance regularly.
- Automate your processes to improve speed, accuracy, precision, reproducibility, and reduce failures.
