Order communications: towards improved processing of pathology requests

Time for change
Barnsley and Rotherham hospitals are NHS Foundation Trusts situated 10 miles apart, serving two of the four districts of South Yorkshire, each with populations of around 225,000. In 2009, the hospitals combined their pathology departments to take advantage of economies of scale, modern technology and shared expertise and experience. The two hospitals already share GP practices and patient catchment areas, and there were strong economic and logistical arguments for both departments to adopt the same IT system. At the time, Barnsley needed to replace core laboratory equipment and, with both hospitals running identical high-capacity analysers for most chemical pathology, haematology and virology tests, it proved easier to integrate report requesting and sample tracking with identical IT systems. This would also allow staff from either hospital to transport patient samples between sites without the fear of mixing up or losing critical information.

A new combined IT system was set up in the autumn of 2009 to accommodate
the different systems in use at the local GP surgeries, and aimed to tackle the reception bottleneck that was holding up the timely and orderly processing of samples. At the same time, tailored ICE order-communications software from Sunquest was installed to electronically handle incoming test requests and orders for all departments in pathology.

The inclusion of order-communications software gives GPs the ability to request pathology tests from their desks and, back in the laboratory, all the information is held in one place, with a full set of patient and clinical details from the surgery and an automatic print-out of the number of labels required (one per sample tube). The system was configured to the laboratory's specific requirements and was initially piloted in a single-handed GP practice, then in a larger multi-doctor health centre, before being rolled out to all local practices.