Gestione informatizzata del magazzino di laboratorio e valutazione dei costi reali

AUTORI

ABSTRACT

Computerized laboratory warehouse management and assessment of actual costs

Although the patient’s wellbeing is the primary aim of Laboratory Medicine, great attention should be given to laboratory efficiency, particularly for reagent expenses. Without quantitative data it is difficult for a laboratory manager to know the relationship between the number of assays that theoretically can be performed with a reagent package and the number of produced reports. Many factors can affect these data; for instance, the calibration frequency or the number of repetitions of a sample, the scheduled turnaround time for the assay, the number of samples to run or the reagent stability. In this study, a software for the laboratory warehouse management was used to evaluate the actual yield of reagent packs and to estimate the real cost of measurements. Costs for reagent purchase in a 12-month time period and data of 1440 different product stock movements for issuing 550,000 reports were analyzed for tests ranging from less than 100 to over 250,000 requests/year. The distribution of the calculated yield for reagent packs was between 16.7% and 98.5%, with a median value of 65.5% (confidence interval, 55.0-79.0). On average, the percentage yield for reagent packs rapidly grows in proportion to the number of determinations performed up to 10,000 tests per year. For assays with a request number exceeding 10,000 the yield was almost always >80%.

BIBLIOGRAFIA