The clinical laboratory today is under increasing pressure to perform more efficiently in light of growing healthcare demands. Encumbered by heavier workloads, increased documentation requirements, and expanded training needs, laboratories are looking for solutions to help streamline workflow and inform decisions for more effective care. Integrated delivery networks (IDNs) face the added burden of tracking the performance of individual laboratories while standardizing processes throughout the network at large. This is while responding to the strain caused by hospital consolidations, population health management initiatives, and falling Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) reimbursement rates.
As healthcare has evolved to create these new challenges, the industry has responded. Leading innovators have worked to develop clinical IT solutions that complement the laboratory’s information system (LIS). These middleware and business analytics solutions can be used to assess and enhance capacity and efficiency, improve and monitor turnaround time (TAT), maximize staff resourcing, track specimens to reduce identification errors and improve issue management, and optimize test utilization.
Source: MedicalLaboratoryObserver
