In improving productivity, we can look at productivity as lots of necessary and required tasks being completed (quantity) and finished work that is effective (quality) and efficient (little effort is wasted). This can be defined in an equation: Time + Energy + Attention = Effectiveness + Efficiency and is illustrated by the image to the right.16 Productivity is not about doing more work but about doing it more effectively and efficiently.
Effectiveness is the ability to realize goals or specific outcomes. It is doing the right work to create a quality product. Efficiency is how you do the work. In the diagnostic laboratory, there are numerous tasks with outcomes that can be identified as goals. Once the staff understands that tasks may have specific benchmarks, strategies to make the staff more effective can be identified and put in place. The dissection of the tasks to reach benchmarks allows for looking at better ways to reach the outcomes. Benchmarks give a sense of direction, create motivation, help prioritize and give a sense of satisfaction when completed.
Developing a schedule for tasks and how they will be done is important in order to be more productive. In the clinical laboratory setting, a schedule around a workflow plan leads to greater efficiency in doing the work. A typical workflow of a clinical diagnostic laboratory includes receiving test requests, receiving samples, labeling samples, accessing them, processing and testing samples, reporting results to physicians, and storing or disposing of samples in that order. Breaking these workflow steps down and defining how and when each step will be done (scheduling) will help staff be more productive.
For example, test ordering, sample collection, and sample labeling scheduled during a certain period (except for STAT testing) allow accession processing and testing to go more smoothly. If interruptions are limited during the workflow process by identifying strategies to limit this, greater efficiency will result. An example might be a lab that has many incoming calls from providers asking for test results interrupting workers during the workflow processes. This might be addressed by more fully automating the test reporting process and designating staff not involved in the workflow process to be responsible for calls.
