Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Westgard and Westgard had an excellent time down in the "Big Easy." We had the honor of presenting at the Quality ConFab, where Robert Michel delivered the bad news: there's no "big easy" in the laboratory's future. In fact, it's most likely that the financial straits for the laboratory are only going to get harder.
While the ConFab is often dominated by efficiency experts and consultants, this year placed a greater emphasis on the Quality part of the Quality ConFab. The truth is, most labs have been "leaned" until they're skeletal - there's no more staff to cut, the budgets are smaller than ever before. And many labs have installed tracks and automation and plenty of informatics. Alas, we're seeing the Red Queen effect - you must keep running as fast as you can, just to try and keep up. As quickly as labs are able to achieve a new level of productivity, the healthcare economy demands even more from them.
Part of the solution means returning to a long-neglected process at the core of our mission: the analytical quality of our testing. We can make our tests cheaper, we can run them faster, we can report them through informatics faster still, but if the result is still just a wrong number, we're not saving any time, money or effort. Instead, we're only creating more failure demand. We need to make sure we get the right quality right the first time.
The Affordable Care Act, as well as healthcare "reform" (or austerity) efforts all over the world are putting such pressure on labs that the essential quality of the testing process can no longer be ignored. We're happy to see the Quality ConFab bring this issue back to the heart of the laboratory debate.
Really good news! In fact, all of us have to do so, and quality must be our most important issue. I in my own laboratory always remember to myself and others:
We are not to select “Cheep” between “Right” and “Cheap”; and also we are not to select “Easy” between “Right” and “Easy”. At first, we just have to try to select “Right” between “Right” and “Wrong”. Then if possible, we can try to make the “Right” be done cheaper and easier.
“If possible” means that making things being done cheaper and easier does not harm the “Rightness” of them.
Hassan Bayat’ DCLS
Sina Lab, Qaem-shahr (Iran)
Posted by: Hassane Bayt | October 22, 2013 at 08:47 AM
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Posted by: KALA DEVI NADARAJAN | November 13, 2013 at 10:52 PM