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Summary
Lakeridge Health’s large multisite laboratory faced many problems involving manual document control and accreditation management—challenges that were exacerbated by staff shortages and an increasing test volume. Laboratory management realized that improved document control was essential for accreditation compliance and would also enable laboratory personnel to access and manage documents more efficiently. Various software packages for quality management were evaluated according to the needs assessment of the laboratory. The LabQMSTM (Quality Management System) from the software vendor SoftTech Health (New York City, NY) was ultimately selected. What follows is a description of the laboratory’s experience and recommendations.
About the Laboratory
Lakeridge Health is a large healthcare network consisting of four facilities. The busy laboratory provides a full menu of tests, and has a combined test volume averaging 3 million tests annually. Laboratory services are supported by a staff of 104 full-time employees.
Currently, Lakeridge Health Laboratory Services faces many of the same pressures that confront other laboratories: staff shortages, declining operating budgets, constant technological change, and increased demand for laboratory services. In addition, the laboratory faces the additional time pressures of managing and complying with accreditation requirements.
Assessing the Laboratory’s Challenges
The laboratory had previously undergone College of American Pathologists (CAP) accreditation and was well aware of the additional demands that accreditation makes on staff time and resources. Connie Thurber, who led the accreditation team, estimates that she alone spent 500 hours in preparing for accreditation. Other team members, who came from each section of the multidisciplinary laboratory, also devoted many hours to accreditation management.
Time was spent participating in meetings and other discussions, finding and organizing the supporting evidence for each item on the accreditation checklist, and tracking and reporting on progress. As Thurber noted, these demands on time resulted from the need to prepare for and manage the accreditation process (and did not include the time required to actually implement and follow quality guidelines on the laboratory’s day-to-day work).
Of particular concern was the laboratory’s need for more effective document control. There were two issues: first, in order to comply with accreditation, laboratories must establish an effective document control system. That is, each document must be created, updated, approved, and archived in specific ways, or the laboratory would have deficiencies on the checklist. Second, although Lakeridge Health Laboratory Services had the required policies and procedures (P&Ps) in place, they were published in paper-based binders. Laboratory management knew that if access to P&Ps was improved for all laboratory locations and if online keyword searches were possible, the laboratory staff would save time.
The Process of Accreditation Assesses the Quality Management of a Laboratory
Because accreditation is essentially a validation of the effectiveness of the laboratory’s quality management system, Thurber realized that efficient accreditation management correlated with efficient quality management. “We had the right documents and processes in place to guide and measure our quality performance,” says Thurber, “but we needed to find a way to make the process more time-efficient and thus more cost-effective. We also needed a way to centrally manage documents that originated from several different laboratory sites.”
Faced with staff reductions, and the resulting pressure to do more with less, Thurber was able to obtain budgetary approval for the purchase of a software program that would automate the more time-consuming aspects of quality and accreditation management. “Nowadays, it’s not necessarily about cost savings,” says Thurber, “it’s more about time savings; because of staffing pressures, laboratories need to make better use of the staff they have.”
From their initial assessment, the Lakeridge Health laboratory management had some idea of the features needed for the laboratory’s Quality Management software. After prioritizing those features in order of importance, Thurber set out to find a solution that met the laboratory’s needs.
The final choice: SoftTech Health LabQMS
Ultimately she chose the SoftTech Health LabQMS. A critical factor was user-friendliness. “The SoftTech Health LabQMS software was received with enthusiasm by our staff for two reasons: they understood immediately how to use it, and they also understood immediately how it would save them time on the job.” Thurber also noted that the laboratory was able to find a solution that was both laboratory information system (LIS)-agnostic and instrument-agnostic, criteria which the SoftTech Health software satisfied.
The experiences of Lakeridge Health Laboratory Services in choosing, adopting, and using the new system gave rise to the following recommendations:
- Bring the information technology department into the final selection process, as they will need to be onboard when implementation takes place and be able to provide expertise in evaluating the software and continual support of the product.
- Put user-friendliness at the top of your priority list when choosing software; if the staff understands the software, they will actually use it
- After choosing a solution that provides document control and batch importation of existing methods, policies, etc., plan ahead and think about what is ready to “go live,” and schedule importation of documents accordingly.
“Our recommendations have more to do with the lessons learned about our own internal processes,” says Thurber, “because we’ve been very happy with the SoftTech Health product. In fact, we are so impressed with the power of this software that we are actually looking forward to showing it off during our next accreditation assessment!”
As healthcare laboratories like the one at Lakeridge Health struggle with staff shortages and increasingly stringent quality requirements, successful managers will continue to evaluate the potential of information technology for helping them achieve their efficiency objectives.
Please check out our Lab Management Software section for more information or to find manufacturers that sell these products