Executive Summary for the Department of Pathology

Introduction and Background

This project was vitally important because the legacy facility had fallen into disrepair. The DoD approved for Walter Reed Medical Center to move into a new facility by 30 November 2020. The Department of Pathology had old, worn out equipment and sent many lab tests to reference laboratories causing delays in treatments and poor patient satisfaction. On 1 March 2018, the project began. It was completed prior to the 30 November 2020 deadline and within budget. (Follow-up will continue 60-90 days post opening)

Project Purpose

The entire team was charged with implementation of new equipment, training of staff members, and maintaining patient care standards with zero downtime. Additionally, the team was to ensure that the new facility space is cutting edge and efficient for many years to come.

KeystoSuccess

Main Objectives and Deliverables

Reduce Preventable Errors

• By purchasing the most state of the art equipment available, this allowed the lab to reduce preventable errors by more than 76%

• The pre-analytic phase of processing has been automated with the Cobas https://usdiagnostics.roche.com/en/core_laboratory/instrument/cobas-6000-analyzer-series.html

• Interoperability improved with middle ware and other software upgrades

Improve TAT

• Turn-around times to all departments in the hospital have been improved significantly, most importantly, the ED

• the average turnaround time to process specimens decreased by 13%

Positive Business Intelligence (BI)

• Implemented using a commercial BI tool
• Identification of dashboard objectives
• A case-level dashboard was then developed
• Is currently being implemented for managing day-to-day operations

Improve Patient Satisfaction

• Building a real-time tracking system has kept the lab in a position to continue successful operations
• There has been an increase of 23% in patient satisfaction with this new tool

SatisfactionResults

Improve Quality

• Through implementation of state of the art software, patient and data quality were drastically improved

Conclusion

The department of pathology is extremely impressed with the new facility and its capabilities. The cutting edge equipment and concentration on improving the patient exerience has suplanted Walter Reed as the premier MTF in the Armed Forces. Continued process improvements over the next couple of years with only improve patient and provider satisfaction.

Facility Pictures

Campus

Lab

Micro

Morgue