Challenge

A large health services network was spending too much time entering and fixing data errors, especially in their labs. They struggled with patient labels and documentation as well as the ability to capture indexing data accurately. They knew there was a better and faster approach using a more modern technology stack and turned to Quest Diagnostics for help.

Solution

In 2019, the organization implemented Intelligent Data Capture (IDC), powered by Ephesoft, as part of Quanum® Enterprise Content Solutions. One of the project sponsors began tracking errors based on the percent of requisition on their labels. Prior to using IDC, the error rate was at 84% and after a month of using the system, the error rate was down to 19%. Additionally, the project manager analyzed the different types of error rates.

The tests showed that account number issues were the highest at a 43% error rate, which dropped sharply after 10 days and leveling out to about 6% at the end of the month. Approximately 22% of errors involved the label not being read at all. The reason for this was that the font used incorporated a slash through the number zero and their scanner did not recognize the character and could not decipher if this was a 0, 6, or 9. The organization had to go into the EHR to change the font.

They also decided to remove unnecessary things from the label like the “Lab Requisition Number”, which made room for more important data. These adjustments made the process better and testing easier and brought the error rate down to 11.8%. “The Quest Diagnostics team was a huge help. They made a series of small tweaks, which added up to a lot,” explained the Project Manager.

Another factor for errors examined was caused by crooked labels. At the beginning of the analysis, crooked labels accounted for only 12.7% of errors. However, this error impacted the entire process much more than one might suspect. If there was one crooked label error in a batch of many, the entire batch could not run or be validated. Discovering this problem with the new technology reduced this down to 0.5%.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response

IDC has enabled the health services network to not only reduce errors, but also respond to a drastic increase in volume of lab requisitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Being able to manage the release of information and reporting in the system, and turn our people from being so paper-based into health informatics professionals, has helped our organization. On top of that, Enterprise Content Solutions was very easy for us to learn. Even people that have been filing for 30 years feel confident in the system. They can look at their processes, understand and troubleshoot better than ever before – we’re ecstatic.”

“Quest Diagnostics has helped us change our thinking, from being a paper-based system, to one where the possibilities are endless.” – HIM Project Manager