16 de març 2014

Keep on improving

On the improvement of blood sample collection at clinical laboratories

Efficiency in healthcare management comes as the result of many decisions and actions. Knowledge can improve such decisions. This weekend I was reading this article on clinical labs and how to collect samples with less routes. With operations research techniques, it is possible. Afterwards there is a need to implement them. The results of the article:
The two laboratories in this study previously planned routes manually for 43 and 74  collection points, respectively. These routes were covered by an external carrier company. With the implementation of this algorithm, the number of routes could be reduced from ten  to seven in one laboratory and from twelve to nine in the other, which represents  significant annual savings in transportation costs
The potential for operations research in healthcare is huge. The incentives to apply it, low (unfortunately).