In grammar school, the “three Rs” still hold sway (or so we all hope). But in point-of-care testing, there’s just one R that matters: Relentless. It’s a word that comes up over and over again in conversation with hospital POC testing coordinators—yes, even more often than “specimen” or “CLIA.”

“People pretty much know I’m relentless about certain things,” says Tim Deen, MLT(ASCP), MT (HEW), POC testing manager at Medical City Hospital, Dallas. “My chief nursing officer has kindly referred to me as a ‘tough-love’ type of person.” In that regard he has a lot in common with Deb Phaup, BS (MT), MT(ASCP), CLS (NCA), POC coordinator at Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, Mass. “I’m relentless,” she admits, laughing.

Personable as Deen and Phaup are, they know that POC testing safety is nothing to joke about. With thousands of POC tests performed in their hospitals each month, theirs is not exactly a sit-back-and-relax situation. With their colleague Joann Bauwens, BS(MT), MT(ASCP), MA(HSM), interim director of laboratory services and POC testing coordinator at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center, St. Louis, Mo., they provide insight into what keeps POC testing on the safe side.

Both Deen and Phaup assumed their POC responsibilities just over a decade ago, when bedside testing wasn’t as frequently conducted or as closely regulated as it is now. When Deen began, he says, Medical City Hospital’s point-of-care program was “a lax system, where the lab was not involved.” And at Mount Auburn Hospital, where the POC coordinator position was created for Phaup, “nobody even knew what POC testing was,” she says. “The first week I started the job, I came into work and the then-manager ­didn’t even know where to put me. I was just standing in the hall without a clue.”  Click here for more>

Stuck in the Middleware
Labs Look for Answers as New Consortium Aims to Untangle the Mess
By Deborah Levenson, May 2008, Clinical Laoratory News

Mention “middleware” in a room full of lab directors, and you are likely to hear varied definitions of what it is and a wide array of uses for it. But generally speaking, the term has come to describe any hardware and software that acts as an intermediary between instruments and lab information systems (LIS) and allows them to exchange data or perform data management tasks the LIS can’t.

Middleware’s popularity took off in the early 1990s when personal computers that generated reports and buffered results became more common. Since then, middleware has become mainstream in POCT and a common, relatively inexpensive solution for core labs grappling with a wide range of problems including shortages of med techs, increases in test volume, more complex devices and lab operations, a federal push for electronic health records, and an overall trend toward ensuring quality of care.

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Connectivity: Success in POCT