Optimum service provided by distributing the workload

Part of Sonic Healthcare, TDL is the largest independent provider of clinical laboratory diagnostic services in the UK, supplying pathology services to a wide range of customers. At Ealing, the company manages the entire laboratory service for the hospital. Around 2000 samples are received in the laboratory at Ealing each day. In-patient samples and short turnaround time (STAT) tests – about a third of the workload – are conducted locally, while samples from GPs, out-patients and those requiring esoteric tests are sent to TDL’s main laboratory. Distributing the workload in this way optimises resource utilisation, giving greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness while ensuring that the needs of healthcare providers are met.

At its central London laboratory, TDL uses 11 Roche MODULAR ANALYTICS analysers in PPPP, PPEE and EEE configurations. These handle over 12 million tests per year. In Ealing, two Roche cobas 6000 instruments, each with a clinical chemistry and immunoassay analyser, are used. For Mick Drake, having a single supplier for both locations is a critical issue as “the benefit of running both laboratories on Roche analysers is that we’ve got disaster recovery across the two sites. The reference ranges are the same and if anything happens at Ealing we could actually do most of their work here,” he comments.

As it is, samples are often tested at both locations. Standard tests can be run on a sample in Ealing, and the primary tube can then be sent to TDL in London if an esoteric test is required. The two sites are connected by an extensive IT system that utilises Roche’s PSM middleware to create a single ‘virtual laboratory’. As Mick explains: “we can book a sample in at either of our sites and then put it on any of our machines and the test will be done. If an additional test is requested later, it doesn’t matter if the sample has been transferred, as it simply gets run at whichever laboratory it’s in.”