Synchronized Clocks: Helping to Ensure Proper Laboratory Turnaround Time
Whether or not your hospital or healthcare facility has its own lab, ensuring a prompt and appropriate turnaround time (TAT) for a lab sample can significantly impact patient satisfaction and clinical decision-making. TAT is widely defined as the time elapsed from when the lab receives the sample until the sample reports are sent back to the clinical staff with lab verification. Physicians may view TAT as the time between test ordering and result reporting. No matter the definition, both can factor into a patient’s care outcome and experience. For facility leaders with in-house labs, think: when did you last analyze your lab’s average TAT?