Pathology Improvement Group

Pathology Improvement Group 2020

The Health Roundtables special Pathology Improvement Group allows members to share successful innovations at our annual workshop and through our online innovation library.

In 2018, in collaboration with Public Pathology Australia, a dedicated special improvement group was formed to identify improvement and service enhancement to improve the efficiency and quality of Pathology services across patient episodes. Focusses requested by our members included:

1. Ordering the right test at the right time
2. Understanding the future of pathology testing - point of care vs central labs; new advances like genomics
3. Benchmarking overall costs of pathology testing (in-house vs commercial contracts)
4. Ensuring that pathology results are recorded in patient records for coding/treatment purposes
5. Comparing pathology productivity - relative value units per FTE
    

Pathology Improvement Group members learnt and adapted existing models of care and developed peer networks that helped them improve their pathology services.

The Pathology Improvement Group is extremely relevant in 2020, as clinical pathology testing is seeing accelerated growth due to:

1. Aging population & increased acuity
2. R&D leading to more sophisticated specialised testing e.g. in genomics
3. Increased recognition of value of early detection
4. Increased affordability
5. Change in technology - most tests currently ordered by clinicians however changes in technology may lead to growth in point of care testing, testing in doctors’ offices and home testing.

This group investigated and discussed some of the key issues around clinical pathology testing:

• Is there scope to speed up the pace of change in pathology to deliver the benefits available from service reconfiguration and technological development?
• Understanding the future of pathology testing - point of care vs central labs; new advances like genomics
• Are there opportunities (to adopt) new investigations and procedures employing innovative technologies?
• Can we strengthen links between primary care and laboratories to improve turnaround times and reduce inappropriate requests for pathology tests?

For more information or to join this relevant group please contact Health Roundtable HERE.