Lab Team Pokes at Processes and Gets Results

When the histology team at Airport Way Lab in Portland, Oregon, began receiving complaints about long wait times for results, they took a deeper look at their workflow. By documenting and tracking the time needed for each step, they discovered a glitch: processing times were not lining up with staff schedules, creating a bottleneck in the workflow. By adjusting schedules to ensure ample staffing at key times, they found sweet success. Wait times for lab results fell by 56%, from 395 minutes to 220 minutes.

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TTP Blurb

Wait time for lab results fell by 56% after team members adjusted their workflow and schedules.

Why This Matters

Delivering timely results reduces patient anxiety and enables physicians to diagnose and treat patients sooner.

Test of Change

Documenting and tracking the time to process tissue specimens

Short Teaser

Shifting schedules improves lab turnaround time.

Medium Teaser

When the work started piling up, this lab team was at a loss. After using process mapping to identify barriers, it adjusted schedules to ramp up staffing to handle heavy workloads at key times.

Long Teaser

When the work started piling up, this lab team was at a loss. After using process mapping to identify barriers, they found some easy remedies. By adjusting schedules, they were able to ramp up staffing to handle heavy workloads at key times.

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