A CLINICIAN WORKSTATION FOR IMPROVING LABORATORY USE - INTEGRATED DISPLAY OF LABORATORY RESULTS

Physicians are often forced to make decisions about the use of laborat ory resources without adequate access to earlier results and related s upporting information. Less than optimal use of the laboratory may res ult. The authors developed and deployed a clinical workstation meant t o provide ready access to laboratory information that is presented in a format well-matched to the patient monitoring task. The workstation was one element of a multifaceted effort to improve blood component us e in adult and pediatric bone marrow transplantation units, It was the sole intervention focused on improving laboratory testing. In the 2 y ears since the introduction of the workstation, median charges of bone marrow transplantation cases for laboratory tests fell by 32%. This r eduction in charges has been maintained for 2 years, Better informed p hysicians appear to use laboratory resources more sparingly.