In the last decade, many labs were apprehensive about home collection services due to several reasons. Small labs did not see it as a profitable opportunity whereas mid to large diagnostic centres invest into it for some extent only. But, the pandemic has been an eye opener to make diagnostic business understand the importance of home collection services. It has now become a necessity to offer patients especially when travel is a barrier constraint and going to a lab for testing is not possible for many.
Patient Segment where home visit must be considered?
- Senior citizens
- Patients diagnosed with severe morbidities
- Bed-ridden patients
- Patients who have undergone trauma or accidents
- COVID-19 symptomatic
List of tests or lab procedures that are useful for care during a home visit?
- Blood Tests
- Urine Tests
- Stool Tests
- Semen Tests
- Swab Tests
- ECG
- X-rays
How to manage home collections?
Managing logs for home collection can be tough - right from phlebotomist allocation to tracking their activity and evaluating whether sample is collected timely, to ensuring sample is received timely with proper barcoding and patient details attached. It is quite tedious backed with delays and errors when its all manual. Thus, use an LIS solution for smooth management.
Use CrelioHealth LIMS to manage, track and provide home sample collection services faster
CrelioHealth LIMS software allows pathology labs to register patients through patient portals for home collection.
- Address and time are the mandatory data fields that must be recorded along with patient’s contact details and other info.
- By logging onto the home collection panel in the LIS solution, technicians can assign visits to the phlebotomists that are active and available at service.
The home collection dashboard also allows you to track and view the status of bookings for home collection as -
- Pending - Request still in the queue and haven’t been approved yet
- Unassigned - Requires lab technicians to assign booking to relevant phlebotomist
- Ongoing - Show if the collection service trip is active, assigned, in-progress or completed
The dashboard also allows technicians to reschedule, cancel or view all the necessary details for home collection. Status monitoring enables efficient management.
Ways to help your lab get home collection bookings without delay
To be able to get home collection bookings, you will have to notify patients that this facility is available at your lab. To do so, it is necessary that you utilize the right channel and frequency to ensure that they receive the apt details about your lab. Here are a few ways that can help -
Having an online presence - Provide a website link that allows patients to easily register themselves, book an appropriate time slot and make payments from any device
Promoting on digital platforms and social media channels - Allow patients to connect with your lab for home visits by promotions service information on different social media channels and WhatsApp
Providing complete centre details - Enlist an update contact number on bills, receipts or lab info page that helps patients reach out for the service
Patient apps - Allows patients to book home collection services at convenience through their mobile
Note: It is very important to provide complete centre details and keep them up-to-date as you never know which platform your patients prefer to connect with your diagnostic center.
CrelioHealth LIS helps you do all this in one go - right from home collection management using patient request, to phlebo management, scheduling and marketing.
We are thinking of having Home Collection Live Tracking feature. Share your thoughts!