MAS News...

Point of Care Testing at UMass Memorial Health Care, Worcester, MA

UMass Memorial Health Care is the largest health care system in Central and Western Massachusetts. The total number of POCT tests performed annually is approximately 900,000.  The waived testing includes whole blood glucose (Life Scan), Stool for occult blood (Sure-Vue), gastric aspirates and vomit for pH and occult blood (Gastroccult), Urine dipsticks (Bayer), Urine pregnancy (OSOM), Hemoglobin (HemoCue), rapid strep (Signify A), H.Pylori (Pyloritek), hemoglobin A1C (DCA2000). Whole blood glucose is the most utilized waived test with a total volume of 500,000 annually. 

The information in this excerpt was taken from the July 2004 issue of
CRITICAL POINTS, the official newsletter of the
AACC Critical and Point of Care Testing Division.  

To view the entire article, click here  • To view the entire issue, click here

The system has 109 Sure Step Flexx glucometers, 62 download locations spread over 45 nursing stations. The database supports greater than 2000 certified operators and all patient and QC results. The RALS-Plus IMS screens over 1000 patient test results daily and sorts results according to the customization profiles established by the POCT division.

We chose the I-STAT method, because it opened up a whole new menu of choices for doing POC testing especially in ICU’s. Currently we have I-STAT devices in all our 8 ICU’s, 2 OR’s and phlebotomy dept. at University and Memorial campuses. All I-STAT devices are networked to the POCT office and interfaced to our LIS system. The POCT division monitors QC and patient data on a daily basis and are able to use system software to customize analyzers to suite specific nursing locations. We currently use Abbott software for our data management, but are looking to consolidate in to the existing RALS-Plus software platform for more uniform management of the POCT testing.