Staff at NHS Wirral’s Heart Support Centre are able to offer more effective care for patients following the recent installation of a point of care testing service. Decisions about treatment and medication can be made in a single visit, which may also lead to improved health and lower costs.
Point of care testing (POCT) is an innovative form of testing of patient samples outside a conventional laboratory setting, improving patient flow with rapid turn around time for results and improved access to testing in community care settings.
The aim of the co-operation between the Wirral Heart Support Centre and iPOCT was to establish a POCT service to run Full Blood Counts, Urea & Electrolytes and INR testing at the Clinic. This means that patient results are available before the patient sees the Cardiologist. Frieda Rimmer, Clinical Services Manager at the Centre helped to set up the service, she said “I am very pleased with the way the service is running and feel very much supported by the Unilabs iPOCT team who are always at hand at the end of the phone”.
“The goal for the Wirral Heart Centre in using iPOCT Point of Care Testing service is to improve the patient pathway and thanks to iPOCT we can now offer our patients an improved service with fewer visits to hospital” says Dr Abhi Mantgani, PEC Chair at Wirral PCT.
The delivery of iPOCT’s total support solution for point of care testing offers ‘end to end’ connectivity, within an N3 compliant environment. The solution provides network and data security, with 24 hour monitoring of all connections, capture of all test data, equipment and operator information and connection to patient electronic journal if required.. All patient results are reviewed by our Consultant Clinical Scientist. Our friendly support team actively engage with users on a regular basis. iPOCT’s total solution includes an independent/external assessment by UKAS and CPA of our Governance and Quality Framework which includes; monitoring service users performance against a series of Key Performance Indicators, training and competency assessment of operators, validation of analysers, and IT connections, plus monitoring performance in internal quality control and external quality assessment.. All activities are managed in a way to meet the requirements of ISO22870:2006 (BS/EN ISO 15189:2007 Point of Care testing (POCT) Requirements for Quality and Competence) together with the Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA) UK Ltd Standards for the Medical Laboratory and all appropriate national and international guidelines. All procedures implemented at managed sites are mandatory to ensure that the ‘Right Result’ is reported for the ‘Right Patient’
iPOCT are leaders in the field of Point of Care Testing services, offering a total solution for healthcare organisations, both public and private. iPOCT manage remote sites across the UK and in Denmark. “I am very pleased that we now have successfully completed our first POCT installation in the NHS in co-operation with Wirral Heart Support Centre” says Paula Connor – National Manager Clinical Laboratory Medicine – Unilabs UK.
For more information, please contact Claire Pridige Sales & Marketing Manager Unilabs iPOCT +44 (0)1536 521438 or claire.pridige@unilabs.com
Notes to Editors are attached as a separate document:
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