The Barre Clinic is at it again, having completed a second project thanks to their department’s Unit Based Team. Patients had been arriving to their lab appointments too often with no active orders to complete the labs. After brainstorming what was causing the problem and how they might best solve it, the team came up with an intervention that everyone could agree to try. Ambulatory Service Reps began checking for orders when scheduling lab appointments, and lab staff started entering orders in real-time for any outside orders that were faxed to the clinic, rather than waiting until the patient arrived.
By making these changes to their daily workflow, the staff have seen a decrease in the number of patients arriving without orders. It used to be common for patients to arrive at the lab without orders, now it is a rare occurrence.
“It cut out a lot of extra work,” says UBT Co-Lead Amy Moisan. Staff are no longer chasing down providers to get orders or ask what labs need to be drawn, and patients no longer wait in the clinic while they look for orders and enter them, saving both patients and staff precious time.