“I am Head BMS For Haematology and Blood Transfusion Services at Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The service is operated over 2 sites, Royal Preston Hospital (RPH) and it’s smaller sister hospital Chorley and South Ribble District General Hospital (CDH) which is approximately 20 miles away via the motorway.
RPH is the parent laboratory processing approximately 1,500 FBC samples per day. These comprise inpatient, outpatient and GP samples to fully utilise the features available on the HST for re-flexing of blood films. CDH is a smaller multi disciplinary lab and processes inpatient work only.
Coagulation is carried out on both sites with more specialist coagulation and INR’s for patients on anticoagulants being performed at RPH. Current workload at RPH for all coagulation samples in the region of 500 per day.
We have had a long history with Sysmex going back to the days of the NE8000 that was our first Sysmex full blood count analyser. Today we operate with a HST at RPH and a stand alone XE2100 at CDH to provide similar technologies across both sites.
This enables us to move staff around more easily. Analysers on both sites are interfaced to the Laboratory Information system (LIM) via SIS located at RPH.
Both sites also utilise SCNC, provided by Sysmex, which means that any parameters which fall outside defined ranges when e-check QC is processed generate an e-mail to designated BMS staff. This enables us to keep a close eye on QC results across both sites and can highlight problems that may not be picked up by staff processing the samples.
Another plus factor is the use of N3 capability which means that Sysmex staff are able to dial in remotely and fix software problems that may arise on any of the instruments.
For coagulation we are recent newcomers to the Sysmex fold and were among the first to have a CS2100i analyser on site. Previously we had MDA analysers then leased CA1500’s for a short while. The transition to the CS has been remarkably easy despite the fact that due to internal IT issues we are still using the CA1500 to process INR’s for anticoagulant dosing.
Recently this dual system caused problems in that samples plates used for the CA and not the CS were running low but unfortunately this was not noticed until very late in the day. Despite it being after 3.00pm on a Thursday before a bank holiday an e-mail sent to reagents was quickly acted on and the necessary plates were received the following day by courier.
All in all an excellent service! If only it was as easy to get overnight supplies from other companies!
The service we receive form our Sysmex engineers is also worthy of note. We have our routine Preventative maintenance performed at weekends so as not to disrupt the work-flow during the routine working day, a service not offered by other companies. The engineers are always helpful and the introduction of the telephone support line has been a great bonus, often meaning we can get our analysers up and running more quickly than if we had to wait for a visit.
Julie Oakes
Head BMS Haematology/Blood Transfusion and CDH Multilab
