Russells Hall Hospital in the West Midlands has implemented Real-Time Quality Control (RTQC), a web-based information management tool from Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, for POC performance gains.
It is helping to improve the effectiveness of the trust's Point of Care (POC) quality control (QC) programme by gathering live data from six Rapidlab blood-gas analysers sited across the hospital environment.
Peter Howell, head biomedical scientist at Russells Hall Hospital, said: 'Before this tool we didn't review data in the same way, because it would have taken too much time and infrastructure to review six analysers in different places throughout the hospital.
'Now we export data from the Rapidcomm data management system to the RTQC web tool, which generates a snapshot of our analysers' performance.' 'We use RTQC on a monthly basis but it could be used daily, weekly or fortnightly giving peace of mind that analysers are working well.' Simple reports point out if any issues are occurring that need to be resolved.
Exception reports could also be a good tool to highlight concerns with ageing of the equipment or electrodes.
The metrics from the reports could then provide evidence for business-case planning.
RTQC interrogates real-time data from the blood-gas analysers in critical areas such as obstetric theatre, neonatal unit and the emergency department, in order to generate easy-to-read graphic reports for efficient QC-management review.
The reports can highlight areas of concern and enable a swift resolution at the point of care without lengthy time delays.
The data from RTQC also enables the benchmarking of analyser performance at one hospital or against others in Europe or worldwide.
RTQC is an internal compliance tool that can complement external EQA programmes.
It can be used as frequently as needed outside of external quality reviews to give access to quality-control data whenever it is required.
