ArticleAfrican journal of laboratory medicine2020
Weekly laboratory turn-around time identifies poor performance masked by aggregated reporting.
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 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Monitoring and Root Cause Analysis of Clinical Biochemistry Turnaround Time at a Tertiary Care Institute.Cureus · 2023Article
- Modelling CD4 reagent usage across a national hierarchal network of laboratories in South Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHigh-level monthly, quarterly and annual turn-around time (TAT) reports are used to assess laboratory performance across the National Health Laboratory Service in South Africa. Individual laboratory performances are masked by aggregate TAT reporting across network of testing facilities.
objectiveThis study investigated weekly TAT reporting to identify laboratory inefficiencies for intervention.
methodsCD4 TAT data were extracted for 46 laboratories from the corporate data warehouse for the 2016/2017 financial period. The total TAT median, 75th percentile and percentage of samples meeting organisational TAT cut-off (90% within 40 hours) were calculated. Total TAT was reported at national, provincial and laboratory levels. Provincial TAT performance was classified as markedly or moderately poor, satisfactory and good based on the percentage of samples that met the cut-off. The pre-analytical, testing and result review TAT component times were calculated.
resultsMedian annual TAT was 18.8 h, 75th percentile was 25 h and percentage within cut-off was 92% (
conclusionMasked TAT under-performances were revealed by weekly TAT analyses, identifying poorly performing laboratories needing immediate intervention; TAT component analyses identified specific areas for improvement.
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Registered trials
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