More people are being tested, as the emphasis on Health Promotion, annual
check ups etc means that "well" individuals are seeing their doctors. The
more people tested, the more one can guarantee "abnormal" results, defined
as any part of a unit above or below the "stated " ref range. A doctor has
to further investigate all "abnormal" results, due to medicolegal
implications, and so the "well" individual is now a patient. The busier the
laboratory, the more we rely on profiles to enable us to process the work,
so this increases the ratio per sample. Some labs will insist on separate
samples for TFT, PSA etc, which can reduce the ratio per sample, in
comparison to the laboratory who tries to do all on one sample. If you are a
teaching hospital, where patients are scattered throughout wards, and
"daily" requests are made by the interns, so that they have all the
information at the Consultnat's round, then that gives a high patient/test
ratio. Surely, currently the only meaningful comparison between laboratories
is individual number of a specific test, and perhaps grouped according to
automated instruments. Does it also highlight how poor our computer
managment information is?
____________________________________________________________
Dr. Helen Grimes, Dept. of Clinical Biochemistry, UCH, Galway, Ireland
-----Original Message-----
From: David Brown [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 05 February 2003 10:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Test requests
Thanks to all who replied to my mail regarding patient
test request ratios.
The consensus seems to be people don't have time or
the computer resources/design to calculate them. Too
much emphasis is put on "depends what you mean". I am
aware there is more to just counting test numbers, due
to local factors, staffing levels, equipment used,
complexity of analysis etc. But a test is a single
analysis, a request is the piece of paper on which
they are written,and a patient is the person on whom
the request and the tests are performed.
This question arose from a previous debate on ever
increasing laboratory workloads, but it appears it
isn't important to identify whether this is due to
more tests per patient or more patients having tests
done (or a combination of both?).
Remember someone in the government has said the NHS
is under strain, not because of resources, but because
more patients are being treated than ever before.
Many labs fear they are becoming nothing but "number
crunchers", but it appears they won't even know what
numbers they are "crunching".
Thanks
David Brown
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