Burjeel Holdings selected Lab Operations to digitalize laboratory operations across their 13 hospitals. Learn how Roche digital lab management solutions reduced key tasks and turnaround times, helping improve service and satisfaction for physicians and patients.
Laboratories stand as one of the pillars of efficient healthcare services. They play a role in more than 70% of critical medical decisions, enabling data-driven decisions on diagnoses and patient care.1
Today’s clinical laboratories must cope with increasing workloads with static, or even reduced number of staff, along with high expectations for fast and accurate results.
And because labs account for approximately 10% of hospital billing, the quest to improve efficiency and control costs directly affects a system’s financial performance and overall healthcare costs.2
Burjeel Holdings hospital leadership recognized the urgent need to transform coLAB’s legacy manual processes, which data showed resulted in high FTE costs, long TATs, and data errors. They chose Lab Operation to help digitalize their lab management processes.
Three months after implementation, evaluation teams found that Lab Operation delivered more efficient digital workflow processes that reduced the number of key tasks by 69% and, at the same time, reduced turnaround times (TATs) across 114 tests by an average of 46%.
Based on these strong results and benefits to the whole hospital system, Burjeel Holdings implemented the full digital transformation of all lab operations using Lab Operation manager.
About Customer
Before implementation of Lab Operation, legacy procedures at coLAB entailed staff manually completing a number of pre- and post-analytical tasks, which were physically and mentally demanding, required high manpower cost and were error-prone. After sample collection, staff packed all the tubes individually together with the clinical order, then a courier transported the samples to the laboratory.
Upon arrival at the laboratory, a technician checked each specimen one-by-one and documented them in a log sheet. Afterwards, a technician entered the information into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to register the sample and print a label for each specimen.
After completing the arrival process, samples were processed using various instruments and methods. Once ready, the results were then reviewed and validated by the laboratory professionals in the Laboratory Information System (LIS). The last step was to generate a report including all the test results, which was shared with physicians.
Before updating their processes, a team from Burjeel Holdings carefully assessed how changes would impact personnel across their system and realized that an advanced digital laboratory manager could be implemented on the existing EMR and LIS systems, avoiding the need for a complex and costly wholesale change of their IT solutions.
The coLAB team at Burjeel Holdings selected Lab Operation, Roche’s digital lab management solution, that offers seamless integration with existing IT infrastructure and connects different health information systems and – importantly for laboratory personnel – simplicity and ease of use.
Lab Operation helped to streamline laboratory information management, providing lab staff with relevant information at all times, with an easy-to-use interface for alerts, required actions and system overview.
Technical results verification could be conducted for sample images, instrument flags, reference ranges, previous test results and more. In addition, Lab Operation supports clinical result verification based on rules and criteria, to identify those abnormal test results that required extra attention and automatically release those that met the criteria.
Not only did Lab Operation integrate processes from order to result, and from pre-analytics to archiving, but because it is completely browser based, it also allows users at coLAB to access and use the software from any desktop computer.
With its advanced workflow engine and end-to-end process management capabilities, Lab Operation enables laboratory staff to accurately trace any sample — to know where it was, where it is, and where it is going — with paperless reports and options for both manual and automatic archiving. It has helped to orchestrate all the lab processes and has enhanced operations in all different types of laboratories from low to high-volume output.
“Samples are now ready for immediate processing and sent to Central lab, as we only have to sort the samples at the phlebotomy location.”
Phlebotomy Team
Lab Operation connected different instruments to maximize the predictability of time to test results. Physicians have been impressed by same-day turn-around of test results and, subsequently, increased uptake and utilization of laboratory services.
For Burjeel Holdings, the implementation of Lab Operation has been a flagship success — a proof of concept for digitalization of the hospital system.
Building on this momentum and the documented positive results it delivered for hospital staff and patients, plans were developed for Lab Operation to be implemented at all Burjeel Holdings hospitals. Lab Operation has enhanced the patient experience, enabling physicians to quickly and securely share test results digitally, making it more convenient for patients to consult with physicians regarding their care plan.
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Roche Molecular Systems, Inc.
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Santa Clara, CA 95050
Improving lab operations: OLV’s success story
