LABORATORY PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE AND AFTER INSTALLING A COMPUTER-SYSTEM

A laboratory information system was installed on January 1991 in the clinical laboratory of the Institute Nacional de Cancerologia. Our main objective was to speed up the administrative work and integrate its operations under one management. We evaluated the productivity before (1990) and after installing the system (1992), using the paramenters proposed by the College of American Pathologists. In 1990 there were 30,764 patients who underwent 191,070 laboratory studies, resulting in 131 tests/clerk/day and 21 patients/clerk/day. In 1992 these figures were 43,679 patients, 245,280 tests, 168 tests/clerk/day and 30 patients/clerk/day. The productivity indexes showed a 41% increase in the number of patients and of 28% in the number of tests. In addition, the laboratory personnel started activities in teaching and research which had been non existent before, i.e. in 1992 they started three research projects and participated in three national or international scientific meetings. In summary, no additional personnel was required even though there was an increase in the workload, basically due to a more efficient organization of the work when using a computerized system.