Reconsider Sending Out Lab Tests

Are you sending out lab tests to a reference lab? It’s time to reconsider.

Many see running point-of-care testing (POCT) from their physician’s practice as a burdensome endeavor that is best avoided. Instead, they choose to outsource testing to reference labs such as LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics. While it might be viewed as the best course of action, this creates a barrier and a delay in clinical decisions that don’t work for patients or staff. However, in-house POCT isn’t onerous anymore, with the support of new technology to connect your lab.

By conducting POCT in-house, you can save time and money — for physicians and all practice staff. With a basic set-up, a single visit becomes a seamless process of performing a test and informing diagnosis with an accurate result. This improves office efficiency, as well as patient flow and satisfaction. In this day and age, becoming a seamless, automated, diagnosing machine doesn’t take much. So is it not worth considering?

The benefits of in-house POCT vs. reference lab

There are numerous benefits that come from having POCT in your practice. It enables you to:

• Make clinical decisions and diagnoses with confidence
• Implement treatment plans on the spot
• Provide appropriate antibiotic prescriptions
• Schedule fewer follow-up appointments

Overall, the capability to offer your patients a full test-to-diagnosis service will improve patient outcomes and satisfaction. With no more waiting on lab turnarounds, that necessitate repeat appointments, both you and your patients will save a lot of time.

If you can obtain the devices for POCT, how do you then ensure correct, complete results and the associated administrative headache of CLIA compliance? The answer is found through automation — using a middleware solution to connect your devices and eliminate manual data entry.

Create a smart POCT workflow

All you need is point-of-care lab testing equipment and you can start providing a better patient experience versus a reference lab. This is where an ally like McKesson Medical-Surgical can provide the insight and guidance to see you through the ever changing world of healthcare.

Once you’re up and running with devices for hematology, blood chemistry, diabetic, and urinalysis, for example — you’re ready to connect these devices to your EHR with Relaymed. Our middleware becomes the central hub to connect all your testing equipment. Now all you have to do is run the test and we will handle the rest, ensuring the quick transference of results to the EHR in seconds, with 100% accuracy.

There is no additional administration to be handled. No laborious typing up of results and the inevitable paper printout backlogs. Frankly, there’s no additional effort whatsoever and, as such, no reason to be wary of introducing POCT to your physician’s practice.

What’s more, all quality controls (QCs) are automatically captured, making regulatory compliance as simple as the process of running POCT — seamless!

Start today

Open your connected, in-house lab and reap the benefits immediately. No more waiting on your reference lab. It’s simple to set up and our cloud-based connectivity software makes testing and compliance easy and efficient to manage.