It is easy to see what instruments are physically located in a central laboratory. Laboratory instruments rarely move and are generally large. In contrast, POC devices are usually not seen by laboratory POC, move constantly from location to location (e.g., patient rooms), are small and can often fit into pockets (which can lead to them being misplaced), and in many cases, there are hundreds or even thousands of them. Yet it is the responsibility of laboratory POC to manage all the POC devices and the quality of result they generate.
Generally, laboratory systems do not have the concept of assigning devices to locations. This is because, traditionally, there are few instruments in a department within a central laboratory. In contrast, POC devices are located throughout the hospital and now extend into ambulatory locations such as physician offices or free-standing ERs.
Because there are significantly fewer instruments and operators in the central laboratory, an operator list in each instrument can be manually maintained. However, with POC, there could be thousands of operators doing testing on thousands of devices. These devices are not available to the laboratory. Thus, the operator list cannot, at least easily, be manually maintained.
QML was designed to efficiently manage an unlimited number of devices and automatically send an unlimited number of operators to those devices. Additionally, QML manages the testing privileges for those devices such that only operators assigned to the device locations(s) can log onto the device and perform testing.
In addition, based on sophisticated mapping of patient registration locations to device locations, patient lists can automatically be sent to those same devices for positive patient ID at the time of testing.
Compliance oversight for ambulatory testing locations can also be managed using QML by using sample exception oversight, CLIA-ready reports, customized data mining specific to ambulatory locations, and QC management tools – including Levey Jennings and Linearity graphs – in order to drive better testing practices at your ambulatory testing locations.
