Customer Profile - Morton Hospital

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Morton Hospital in Taunton, MA is a 144-bed acutecare community hospital serving patients and familiesin southeastern Massachusetts. In addition to acompassionate and skilled team of physicians, nurses andstaff who treat patients like family, the hospital provides comprehensive health care services including emergency care, wound care, state-of-the-art imaging services, and a variety of surgical services including vascular surgery, breast surgery, general surgery, orthopedic surgery and podiatric surgery.

High quality and efficient clinical lab performance is critical to keeping Morton Hospital’s patients healthy and providing the right diagnosis and treatment.

Like many other healthcare providers, Morton Hospital’s diagnostic laboratory is tasked with providing accurate results while managing the challenges of operating with less staff and tightened budgets. This pressure is heightened by decreasing reimbursements, increasing test utilization oversight and regulated clinical quality metrics. Morton Hospital lab– like many clinical labs – requires laboratory tools that help streamline workflow and reduce labor-intensive manual processes.

In 2021, Morton Hospital brought COVID testing in-house to better serve their patient community. However, processing and resulting more than 30,000 additional samples (shared between Morton and their sister lab, St. Elizabeth) caused test processing backlogs in all lab departments. That fall, Morton installed and implemented the Sysmex UN-2000™ Automated Urinalysis Solution. “It couldn’t have been better timing,” stated Dawn Lima, lead hematology technologist. In 2022, Morton was able to successfully integrate more than 17,000 COVID samples into their already busy workflow using the same pre-COVID staffing numbers. Lima credits the UN-2000 with providing more time for the staff to float around to help other benches in the lab. “The complete urinalysis testing is performed quickly with a hands-off approach that allows the tech to leave the bench and cover in serology to help with the COVID, flu and RSV testing. The UN-2000 integrates really well into our community hospital’s rapid response lab,” explained Lima.

Morton Hospital laboratory’s previous urinalysis platform was labor-intensive. With 50% of urinalysis samples requiring a manual review by a laboratory technologist, stat urinalysis testing typically took 20 to 30 minutes to result, mostly due to workflow backlogs at the bench. Additionally, many samples also required dilution or other manual handling prior to analysis on the instrument. As a result of the high operator review rate on their previous UA solution, auto-validation of urine results in the laboratory information system (LIS) would not be impactful and, therefore, was not implemented. Today, the Morton Hospital laboratory conducts urinalysis testing with the UN-2000. Combining the CLINITEK® Novus with Sysmex’s UF-5000™, the UN-2000 provides best-in-class urine dipstick chemistry testing and accurate and reliable urine particle identification using flow cytometry. Since implementing the UN-2000, the laboratory has reduced time-consuming, hands-on reviews and gained highly accurate and precise urine particle quantitation. The analyzer’s proven technology, walkaway testing capabilities and overall system reliability means that Morton’s lab is now able to auto verify approximately 80% of urine samples and deliver urinalysis results in as fast as five minutes.

According to Lima, samples that generate flagging at the UF-5000 are reviewed at the microscope for abnormal elements only. Similar to their hematology testing, “we have a set of rules that tell us whether to accept the automated diff and when to do a manual differential. You don’t visually see those cells, but you know the results are reliable. Imagine counting 90% more diffs when you don’t have to. What a timesaver!” The UN-2000 has given this lab a highly standardized and efficient process for urine particle analysis that provides faster result turnaround times and requires significantly less manual intervention than their previous analyzer. Implementation of the Sysmex UN-2000 has increased efficiency for Morton’s urinalysis bench and has resulted in freeing up one full-time laboratorian to assist in other departments. “Our laboratories provide everything from blood bank services to a wide range of testing including urinalysis, immunology, chemistry and hematology. Automation and accurate results are key to providing valuable information to our doctors,” said Lima, then added “If you want to be a five-star hospital, you have to partner with a five-star company.”

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