Running on Empty

Since our Lab was taken over by a Large Laboratory Corporation a few years ago, we have revamped our ordering system. It seems that accumulating inventory costs money because of taxes and other reasons. So we have pretty much gone to the just-in-time ordering philosophy, and not having any back-up supplies for heavy unanticipated heavy volume or suppliers back ordering items. There are problems with this, though. When an item is back ordered by a company, then we are just out of that item. If we ordered it from another company, then it would cost more and Corporate management does not like that. We are constrained by upper management as to where we can order our supplies, and brands differ from week to week as price shifts in the marketplace.

The result is that every week, or really, every day, we are out of something. So we must do some sort of work-around for some tests almost every day. We have to "make do", "deal with it" or do whatever it takes. Sometimes, what it takes is delaying tests until we get supplies, and thus delaying patient results. And it means sometimes that we do not follow our usual standard procedures. And sometimes in means that we can’t do the test at all, so we have to send it out to another lab to perform, which, once again, delays patient results.

But we can get away with this because people using our lab do not see the inner workings. They see only the incoming specimens and test orders and the report on the other side. They do not see the confusion and disorder that actually goes on.