PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pretlow, Lester
AU  - Johnson, Shamala
AU  - Russell, Barbara
AU  - Evans, Bridget
TI  - A Novel Approach to Managing Hemolyzed Specimens
AID  - 10.29074/ascls.26.3.153
DP  - 2013 Jul 01
TA  - American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science
PG  - 153--157
VI  - 26
IP  - 3
4099  - http://hwmaint.clsjournal.ascls.org/content/26/3/153.short
4100  - http://hwmaint.clsjournal.ascls.org/content/26/3/153.full
SO  - Clin Lab Sci2013 Jul 01; 26
AB  - Hemolyzed specimens continue to cost the laboratory time and money. However, the core laboratory at Georgia Regents Health System, Inc. has instituted a novel approach to managing this problem. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the laboratory's new approach had a significant impact on the turn-around time (TAT) and cost of processing hemolyzed and non-hemolyzed specimens in the laboratory. The investigators queried the laboratory information systems for hemolyzed and non-hemolyzed specimens categorized as routine or STAT from the core laboratory and calculated statistical differences between the groups with respect to TAT and cost.The investigators found a statistically significant difference in the time it takes to process STAT hemolyzed specimens versus non-hemolyzed specimens with the new approach. Because of the new approach, hemolyzed specimens were actually processed as fast as, or faster than non-hemolyzed specimens in the core laboratory.ABBREVIATIONS: GRU - Georgia Regents University, GRSU - Georgia Regents Health System, TAT - Turn-around time, LIS - Laboratory Information System, RT - Report Times, TSC - Technical Staff Cost