Impact of Total Laboratory Automation on Turnaround Times for Urine Cultures and Screening Specimens for MRSA, ESBL, and VRE Carriage: Retrospective Comparison With Manual Workflow
Using computerized time-stamps, we compared the turnaround-times (TAT) for urine samples and screening ESwabs of MRSA, VRE, and ESBL carriage in the bacteriology laboratory of Geneva University Hospitals between January and December 2017 (period preceding the implementation of the WASPLab ) with the...
Saved in:
Published in | Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology Vol. 10; p. 552122 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Switzerland
Frontiers Media S.A
28.10.2020
|
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Using computerized time-stamps, we compared the turnaround-times (TAT) for urine samples and screening ESwabs of MRSA, VRE, and ESBL carriage in the bacteriology laboratory of Geneva University Hospitals between January and December 2017 (period preceding the implementation of the WASPLab
) with the same specimen types analyzed between January and December 2019 (period after the implementation of the automation). During both 1-year periods, a total of 98'380 specimens were analyzed (48'158 in 2017 vs. 50'222 in 2019). On the WASPLab
, all culture plates were imaged at defined intervals each day of incubation, but the processing of the cultures (i.e., pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing) was only performed during day shift hours (~8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.). The median TAT for negative reports decreased by almost half for urine samples from 52.1 (2017) to 28.3 h (2019) (
< 0.001), and for MRSA screening specimens from 50.7 to 26.3 h (
< 0.001). The difference in median TAT for negative reports was less pronounced for screening of ESBL (50.2 vs. 43.0 h) (
< 0.001) and VRE (50.6 vs. 45.7 h) (
< 0.001). Despite a trend toward shorter result delivery for positive samples, there was no significant change in the median TAT. These results suggest that TAT for negative samples immediately benefit from automation, whereas TAT for positive samples also depend on the laboratory hours of operation and daily human resource management. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 This article was submitted to Clinical Microbiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology Edited by: Max Maurin, Université Grenoble Alpes, France Reviewed by: Olivier Dauwalder, Hospices Civils de Lyon, France; Matthew Leon Faron, Medical College of Wisconsin, United States; Ahmad Qasem, University of Central Florida, United States |
ISSN: | 2235-2988 2235-2988 |
DOI: | 10.3389/fcimb.2020.552122 |