Technologist shortages, budgetary restraints and administrative negligence are some of the leading causes for sleep lab inefficiency. Below are several questions that can shed light on whether your sleep lab is being the best it can be.
Are any of your sleep studies scored by unregistered technologists?
Registered techs are trained to score at peak efficiency and accuracy.
Does it take longer than 3 business days for your lab to score patient studies?
If it does, something probably isn’t working right.
Does your lab do monthly audit and inter-rater reliability tests on the scoring of ALL techs?
It’s hard to know where you can improve if you don’t know where the problems are.
Do you have a wait time of over 1 month?
You shouldn’t. Relieving patient backlogs can become a selling point to set you apart from other facilities.
Do you have a process to evaluate the quality of your patient’s sleep study hook-up?
Efficiency is great, but the quality and accuracy of tests must be made a priority.
Do you have a growing backlog of patient studies that need to be scored?
There’s a way to make it disappears forever.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, your lab is not alone. Productivity issues can threaten the reputation of your sleep lab and possibly even the health of your patients. Aligning yourself with a third-party, professional scoring company can not only increase lab efficiency but improve patient care.
When evaluating ways to cut costs, improve performance and generally work smarter, many of the world’s most prominent sleep laboratories are choosing to incorporate sleep scoring services.