TELCOR QML® is designed to meet the specific challenges of point of care testing performed sight unseen outside the walls of the laboratory by thousands of non-laboratorians, on thousands of devices, generating thousands of results daily.
Utilizing TELCOR QML to Enhance Result Oversight Management
Because POC testing is done sight unseen by the laboratory, there are two significant aspects to managing the quality of these results.
The first is the ability to hold selected results for review before sending to the LIS/EMR. Instrument results from the central laboratory are first seen by the operator before uploading to the LIS/EMR or held in the LIS/EMR for review before release. With thousands of results coming from thousands of different POC devices where the results have already been released or acted upon, holding and reviewing them would be a challenge. In QML, customers define rules for holding specific, and sometimes suspect results based on any of the following:
Flags and comments received from the device.
The actual result value based on customer defined ranges by sample type, age and/or gender, or location.
The presence of a previous result meeting customer defined Repeat requirements.
The presence of a previous result meeting customer defined Delta requirements.
The presence of a result meeting customer defined Call requirements.
The absence of required results on the sample.
The absence of other required information on the sample, such as Oxygen Therapy parameters on blood gas samples.
Invalid patient identification.
These rules can be defined by facility, or even down to a facility’s location, allowing for greater flexibility to meet different workflow requirements within each hospital or location. Follow-up is then limited to only flagged results along with electronic documentation of such actions, while all other results are automatically sent to the LIS/EMR.
The second is a review of the quality control results performed on each device to verify the device is performing within the manufacturers' guidelines. Laboratory systems are very limited, if capable at all, in their ability to handle the thousands of quality control results generated daily by POC devices and generate applicable Levey Jennings/linearity charts for each device. The QML result exception process is for more than just patient results; it can also be used to hold QC results outside of the expected ranges.
