ArticleAfrican journal of laboratory medicine2020
Timely delivery of laboratory efficiency information, Part II: Assessing the impact of a turn-around time dashboard at a high-volume laboratory.
Article in African journal of laboratory medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Turnaround Time Trends in Cervical Cytology Screening in South Africa, 2005-2023.Diagnostic cytopathology · 2026Article
- Next-generation hybrid bioanalytical platforms and clinical integration of TDM technologies for precision monitoring to optimize last-resort antibiotic therapy.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- Assessing laboratory specimen losses for the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2025Article
- Development, Implementation, and Evaluation Methods for Dashboards in Health Care: Scoping Review.JMIR medical informatics · 2024Article
- Identification and characterization of critical values in therapeutic drug monitoring: a retrospective analysis.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Appropriateness of laboratory expenditure for primary health care facilities across South Africa.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2023Article
- Modelling CD4 reagent usage across a national hierarchal network of laboratories in South Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2023Article
- Pandemic Response in the Clinical Laboratory: The Utility of Interactive Dashboards.Journal of pathology informatics · 2022Article
- Connected diagnostics systems: The future of disease control in Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2020Article
- Weekly laboratory turn-around time identifies poor performance masked by aggregated reporting.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2020Article
- Timely delivery of laboratory efficiency information, Part I: Developing an interactive turnaround time dashboard at a high-volume laboratory.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn South Africa's National Health Laboratory Service, ad hoc mean turn-around time (TAT) reporting is an important indicator of performance. However, historic static TAT reporting did not assess very long or very short times. An interactive TAT dashboard was developed using the following TAT measures; (1) median, (2) 75th percentile and (3) percentage of within cut-off TAT to allow for improved differentiation of TAT performance.
objectivesThe objective of our study was to demonstrate increased efficiency achieved by using an interactive TAT dashboard.
methodsA retrospective descriptive study design was used. Creatinine TAT outcomes were reported over 122 weeks from a high-volume laboratory in Gauteng, South Africa. The percentage of within cut-off and 75th percentile TAT were analysed and reported using Microsoft Excel. A focus group session was used to populate a cause and effect diagram.
resultsThe percentage of within cut-off TAT increased from 10% in week 4 to 90% and higher from week 81. The 75th percentile decreased from 10 hours in week 4 to under 5 h from week 71. Component TAT analysis revealed that the 75th percentile testing was 5 h or longer for weeks 4, 5 and 48. The 75th percentile review TAT ranged from 1 h to 15 h. From week 41, the review TAT was under 1 h.
conclusionOur study demonstrated that the use of an interactive TAT dashboard coupled with good management can dramatically improve TAT and efficiency in a high-volume laboratory.
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