Courier delays significantly impact optimal patient care according to multiple surveys

What if I told you that there is an area of your operation that you’re probably not even thinking about, but it contributes to surgical cancellations, loss of irreplaceable specimens, reduced nurse satisfaction, and diminished operational effectiveness? What if I further told you that the culprit is choosing the wrong medical courier?

I recently wrote an article for Modern Healthcare that explores some surveys that have been fielded over the past 18 months—targeting both nurses and laboratory professionals. Findings from both surveys overwhelmingly demonstrate how medical courier delays significantly impact patient care.

Here are a couple of quick data points from those surveys:

• 56% of nurses had to reschedule a patient procedure in the past year because of medical courier delays or errors
• 65% of nurses had to collect another specimen/sample for testing because of medical courier delays or errors
• 61% of lab supervisors, managers and directors reported their labs had irreplaceable specimen loss due to a courier error in the past year, while 18% said it happened five or more times in the past year

Numbers like these are too high to ignore, especially in today’s environment of labor shortages, nurse burnout and compressed, or negative, operating margins.

Historically, medical couriers or healthcare logistics have been viewed as a commodity—a simplified view that only considers the unit cost for movements from point A to point B. But visionary healthcare leaders take a radically different perspective and view same-day logistics through a holistic lens.

“While it is easy to simply look at the pure cost—or dollars spent—it is imperative to look beyond that and consider the value of the spend related to your [company’s] success,” says Sam Terese, CEO and president of Alverno Laboratories—a MedSpeed customer for more than a decade.

Virtually everything a health system does depends on effective logistics. To truly be successful healthcare organizations need logistics partners that help improve patient satisfaction and care. The right logistics service provider can meaningfully improve community health, elevate patient experience, and boost clinician satisfaction, all while strengthening a healthcare organization’s bottom line.