Increasing Staining Capacity Through Optimizing Use of Instrumentation
The Leica Biosystems Process and Solutions team has partnered with a Province-based hospital to examine how to optimize their Immunohistochemistry department. Hospital leadership is most interested in gaining efficiencies to accommodate a growing volume of Immunohistochemistry stains. The goal is to increase the department’s throughput so that they can handle the increased volume without adding additional staff.
The Process and Solution team began by spending several days observing their current workflow and processes. During the benchmark, the team realized that this facility has one tech assigned to cut IHC slides at specific times throughout the day. Another tech is assigned to manage the instrumentation and perform the IHC staining. During the observation, it was noted that due to the scheduled work hours, on most days it was not possible to perform more than 2 runs daily. Another issue observed was the need to manually enter the stain orders into the IHC instrumentation. That was another obstacle causing delays to get more than 2 runs daily.
The first suggestion was to integrate their LIS with the IHC instrumentation. The second suggestion was to create a split shift by combining responsibilities from two current positions.
By incorporating these two changes, this hospital:
- Eliminated the chance of data entry error and hands-on tech time
- Expanded their coverage of the IHC staining area from 8 hours to 91/2 hours daily
- Increased their daily IHC staining capacity from 120 slides to 180 slides by performing 3 runs daily
Projections and Realized Results are specific to the institution where they were obtained and may not reflect the results achievable at other institutions.
Leica Biosystems content is subject to the Leica Biosystems website terms of use, available at: Legal Notice. The content, including webinars, training presentations and related materials is intended to provide general information regarding particular subjects of interest to health care professionals and is not intended to be, and should not be construed as, medical, regulatory or legal advice. The views and opinions expressed in any third-party content reflect the personal views and opinions of the speaker(s)/author(s) and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views or opinions of Leica Biosystems, its employees or agents. Any links contained in the content which provides access to third party resources or content is provided for convenience only.
For the use of any product, the applicable product documentation, including information guides, inserts and operation manuals should be consulted.
Copyright © 2024 Leica Biosystems division of Leica Microsystems, Inc. and its Leica Biosystems affiliates. All rights reserved. LEICA and the Leica Logo are registered trademarks of Leica Microsystems IR GmbH.