Changing routine inpatient blood draws to occur at midnight, rather than in the early morning, balances laboratory workload and improves the availability of test results, according to a study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology. From a laboratory perspective, the researchers say that redesigning inflow of laboratory orders improves laboratory processing efficiency and cuts stat orders. Turnaround times and ordering practices were compared during an intervention period from Nov. 16 to 30, 2011, in which the researchers changed the timing of routine blood draws from the standard practice of early morning (6 a.m.) to midnight on five inpatient wards (160 bed capacity) to usual care during an observation period the prior weeks (Nov. 1 to 15, 2011). Previous evidence has shown that delayed reporting of early morning test results can lead to duplicate test orders and increases in the number of STAT orders. Additionally, it is documented from a workflow perspective that routine morning blood draws create an uneven workload distribution for the laboratory. The researchers found that altering the blood draw time changed the total volume of laboratory test orders from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. for the entire institution from 55 percent […]