Wireless glucose results - latest on real-time data
October 2007 issue of CAP TODAY

More than a decade after tight glycemic control made its debut in the early 1990s, numerous studies, and recommendations from organizations such as the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American Diabetes Association, have affirmed its ability to decrease everything from mortality and comorbidity to the risk of heart failure and organ damage. But from a point-of-care testing coordinator's point of view, tight glycemic control increases a few things, too.

A few? Make that 1,000—the approximate number of glucose results that point-of-care staff at University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, manage every day. After UNC implemented a TGC protocol a few years ago, "the first thing that I noticed as a point-of-care person was that it required more glucose meters and testing strips, and more data was being generated," says Beverly Robertson, MPH, MT (ASCP), until recently UNC's point-of-care testing coordinator and now a technical service representative for Somerset, NJ-based in Ventiv Health and an authorized installer of LifeScan equipment. In addition to reviewing and charting a greatly increased number of glucose results, the new TGC protocol meant that Robertson was faced with managing more frequent data downloads and data flow bottlenecks. Not only were there more results to deal with, but "all those results were being hand-charted," Robertson says. "And the only way that physicians could review them was to be physically at the nursing locations." In a large institution like UNC, which has 750 beds, 100 units, and nine ICUs, that meant relying on what Connie Bishop, MT (ASCP) SH, UNC assistant administrative director of core laboratories and point-of-care testing, laughingly terms the "sneaker network."  Click here for more>