Lab Professionals’ Effectiveness is Hindered by Courier Errors

Laboratories will always hold a special place for MedSpeed. Our first customer, way back in 2000, was a laboratory and we were 100% lab focused for our first six years of operations. Given this history and with this being Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, it is imperative that we recognize how crucial lab professionals are to patient care.

Recently, we had the opportunity to partner with CAP Today, the publication of the College of American Pathologists, to understand the impact medical couriers have on lab professionals. With over 250 lab professionals responding to the anonymous survey, the findings confirmed what has always been our guiding principle: medical couriers have a significant impact on lab professionals’ productivity.

One finding that stood out to me right away was that not one of the lab survey respondents thought that medical couriers have no impact on their work.

Eighty six percentage of lab professionals said that courier delays and errors prevent them from providing timely and accurate test results for patients at least once a month; 42% of lab professionals said they requested STAT pickups or deliveries to supplement untrustworthy scheduled service; and 32% of lab professionals have transported or shipped specimens themselves.

In response to the question, “As a result of a courier error in the past year, how often has an irreplaceable specimen been compromised, affecting patient care,”

• 61% of supervisors, managers and directors who responded to the survey report that their labs had irreplaceable specimen loss due to a courier error in the past year
• 18% said it had happened five or more times in the past year

The impact of choosing the correct healthcare logistics partner can often be overlooked or simplified to a cost per mile pricing exercise. But this survey highlights the downstream costs of poor courier quality on laboratorians, the clinicians they support, and ultimately, the patient. It is evident that when a strong foundation of healthcare logistics is missing, clinical enablement and care delivery cannot be supported as they must be.

Our team, with an error rate that is a fraction of the industry average, is devoted to supporting our laboratory partners so they can focus on delivering results to their clinical customers promptly, completely and correctly. On behalf of everyone at MedSpeed, I cannot thank lab professionals enough for their contribution to enabling better health for our communities.