Skip to main content
2023-06-05
Testimonials

Improving consistency and enhancing training across hematology laboratory networks - Part #2

Patients should receive the highest standard of care, whichever hospital they attend. Hematology Lab Manager Kristy Carnevale of Cincinnati Children’s describes how CellaVision technology and software has helped standardize processes and training to improve consistency across their multi-site hematology laboratory network.

Cincinnati Children's

Accelerating turnaround times

As well as safeguarding high-quality outcomes, DCM has made a significant difference to turnaround times. “Before implementing the CellaVision software, our outpatient teams would have to transport slides to the central laboratory if they had a question – sometimes even the whole sample in case we needed to do flow cytometry or the pathologist wanted extra slides made,” Kristy Carnevale notes. 

With DCM, patients no longer have to wait for a slide to be couriered from an outpatient location to a pathologist. ”The pathologist can just pull it up on their computer and make an immediate call regarding cells,” explains Kristy Carnevale. “This decreases the wait time for the patient to start treatment and be admitted.” 

“Our turnaround times are 45 minutes for stats and under two hours for routine assessment. We hit those targets 90–95% of the time,” enthuses Kristy Carnelvale. 

Improving patient care

The analytical consistency and speed provided by CellaVision software has had a transformational impact on patient care, reducing waiting times to confident results by a matter of hours. 

This is particularly important in cases of leukemia, explains Kristy Carnevale. “Often patients will go to their family doctor, perhaps with leg pain for instance, and the doctor might not make that connection,” she notes. “But they may have an elevated white count or their platelet levels are a little low.” 

“Obviously the sooner you start treatment, the better off the child is going to be. You don’t want them waiting a couple of days before you start any kind of protocol or treatment. While they wait, their white count can continue to rise, their platelets can continue to drop, hemoglobin levels can continue to drop. They’re just going to get sicker and it takes a while longer to clear those blasts if you in fact have to wait longer.”

Stay tuned for part #3.