Advantages to Bringing Urinalysis Testing In-House

Whether You’re Performing Testing In-House or Sending to a Nearby Lab, Your Practice Can Recognize Several Advantages by Using the Latest Technology

 

Reasons for Urinalysis Testing 

Urinalysis testing is a regular occurrence in every practice. Depending on the nature of your practice, you perform these tests for routine screening of certain health conditions, monitoring patient signs and symptoms including for kidney disease and diabetes, diagnosing Urinary Tract Infections (UTI’s), on hospital or urgent care admission, preparatory surgery checks, and many other reasons. Testing is commonplace and a simple and non-invasive method of diagnosis. Many practices perform these tests on every patient.

 

Challenges of Obtaining Results

While collection is simple and quick, results are not. Some practices send their testing out to a lab or use outdated or slow technology to provide the results.

Sending out to a lab has the obvious delays due to: waiting for the pickup, processing times, and method of returning results – fax, email, or phone. Almost certainly, this involves having to contact the patient again, as the delay means they’ve left your premises. It also means interruption of your schedule since the unpredictability of response times mean results come in on the labs schedule – not yours.

If you’re using outdated or slow technology, your practice has training issues, a staff member dedicated to the multiple reading points required to produce a valid result, the organization of ensuring the right test results followed to the right patient and other challenges. Not insurmountable, of course, but time-consuming, error-prone, and almost certainly, not up to the FDA 2015 standards.

 

Your Practice, Your Patients

You form personal relationships with your patients. They look for timely results to their health questions. Performing urinalysis testing in house gives you that control over response times – particularly because test results can be determined in 60 seconds. While the patient is still in your office. If you’re testing as a pre-procedure diagnostic, you’ve also got expensive resources on standby, waiting for those results before the next step can be taken.

The other side to this is the insurance reimbursement for these tests. If you’re sending these tests out, you’re either losing out on the reimbursement, or greatly decreasing the amount, due to the cost of the lab processing. If you don't perform these tests in-house, then the cost of time and resources to perform them eats into the profitability of each test.

 

Test Requirements and Quality

Most testing requires reading results at several points during test processing. This means setting timers, going back to the station to look at the results, keeping track of each one, and correct interpretation of potentially subjective results. And then getting these results entered into your EMR, so the patient record reflects these results.

This can be challenging enough with only one test in process – while your staff is doing more than one thing at a time – and much more so when there are multiple tests to be done. Keeping “chain of custody” for each patient’s test – from collection to EMR-entered, correctly interpreted tests can be a daunting task in any clinical setting.

The most overlooked aspect is the multiple interpretation points for each test. Result interpretation can’t be done at the endpoint to be correct. It needs to be a multiple-observation process to be valid.

Another important consideration is that in 2015 – now over 7 years ago – the FDA introduced news standards for testing. The Roche and Siemens test units have been around the industry for some time – but neither one meets the FDA 2015 standard. This means that if you’re using these analyzers, your testing does not conform to FDA standards.

 

A New Way

Having now defined the challenges, let’s look at some of the solutions. Clarity Diagnostics, founded in 2003, has introduced the Clarity Platinum Analyzer. This 510K CLIA-Waived and Cleared Analyzer has several features that make the viability of performing these tests in-house an easy choice:

·         Each analyzer is 40% less expensive than Siemens and Roche analyzers

·         The analyzers check for expired and humidity-damaged strips so your staff will know, and results will not be invalid

·         Blood sample interference will be detected and reported

·         Automatically performs the multiple time-checks for proper results interpretation

·         Comes with a free bar code reader for patient-to-results tracking

·         Type C port for EMR connectivity

·         Built-in printer and color touch-screen display

·         Can be programmed for Roche results order, if needed

·         Meets FDA 2015 standard

 

UnimedUSA – 44+ Years of Expertise and Manufacturer Relationships

Choosing the provider of your office equipment and supplies is important. Are they a direct, registered provider of the equipment? How good is their relationship with the vendor? Will it arrive when I need it? Can I get the products I need at the right price?

UnimedUSA has been providing medical solutions since 1978. Along the way, we have cemented our relationships with manufacturers like Clarity, Midmark, Welch Allyn, Waldmann Lighting, Capsa, and many others. This allows us to provide consulting help so you can make the right decisions, while still ensuring the best price. No one likes bad surprises, just as no one likes paying too much when revitalizing an existing practice, opening a new practice or adding a new location. With so many moving parts, we can engage our manufacturer reps when needed, and we can work to get you the best delivery dates, since so much of this equipment is built to order.

We’re here to consult and answer questions throughout the process – please call on us with all of your concerns and needs. You expect that – and we want to be sure you’re comfortable with the decisions you’ll make.

 

You can reach us at 408-433-3300 or at [email protected].