Creative Thinking Makes a Faster Lab
- Opening the lab a half-hour earlier to prevent long lines at the open of business
- Shifting work schedules and staggering lunch hours to have more staff covering available time
- Cross-training staff to register patients, process specimens and draw blood
What can your team do to improve its workflow?
Patients expect to wait at the lab, but when flipping through magazines stretches to an hour, they might as well pack a lunch. The Gilroy Medical Offices lab had this problem, so they shifted schedules and opened a half-hour earlier. They staggered lunch schedules, worked with physicians to make orders clear, and trained all staffers to register patients, process specimen and draw blood. In a month, wait times dropped to 24 minutes and then to 8-15 minutes. Member satisfaction scores jumped 10 points, and 20 monthly complaints became 150 compliments.
An hour's wait time in the lab is unacceptable. See how one team shifted schedules and cross-trained to shave chunks of time.
Shifting schedules and cross-training can help labs work more quickly. Pictured is Gilroy Senior Lab Assistant Valerie Obata, a member of SEIU-UHW.
drop in lab wait times from an hour to as short as eight minutes