POCC Questions

POCC positions need to be full time, due to the responsibility of the position alone; keep lobbying.  To answer your questions:

I am not a full time POCC, I work in the Laboratory as a Generalist, I work on hourly pay.  Out of a full time (1.0 FTE) I average 0.3 FTE for POC and 0.7 FTE for General Lab; this makes overtime to get the POCC job worked on (not done but worked on) a necessity.  There are no other POCCs but have limited help from 3 other Lab scientists on ongoing projects, these people count these work hours towards a Laboratory bonus program.  I work one weekend out of every three on the bench at a 350 bed hospital (two campuses and one clinic).  There are 18 POC tests in use, 5 that are non-waived, with 1200 operators total to keep track of.

Are you solely a POCC? Yes

If not, what are your other duties?

Are you full time? hourly, or salaried? part-time/salary

Do you have other POCC's that work alongside you? No

Do you work weekends? No

How large is your facility? 165 beds

Do you oversee any clinics? If so, how many? Yes/15

Number of waived and nonwaived tests your facility offers In the hospital we perform glucose and Pyloritek for waived and ACT and blood gases for moderately complex. The clinics perform urinalysis, urine preg., rapid strep, hemoglobin, PT/INR, occult blood and flu for waived testing and wet prep, fern, koh, urine sediment for PPMP testing. Not all the practices have the same test menu, and only 3 offices have PPMP certificates.

I agree with Jeremy.

Are you solely a POCC? Yes

Are you full time? hourly, or salaried? I am full-time/salary

Do you have other POCC's that work alongside you? No, though my immediate supervisor has somewhat a working knowledge of what I do so that I can take time off and emergent needs are taken care of.

Do you work weekends? I am not assigned weekends but can be called for questions and may have to come in if cannot be handled by phone.

How large is your facility? 206 bed pediatric hospital

Do you oversee any clinics? If so, how many? We have 3 healthcenters that have 2-3 offices each that perform point of care testing. The main hospital also has a few offices that perform POC testing, not included in-patient testing

Number of waived and nonwaived tests your facility offers: waived includes pregnancy testing, Clinitek UA, gastric pH, Nova glucose, A1C, urine protein (Albustix), Hemocue hemoglobins, and A1C. Non-waived includes ISTAT, Avoximeter, and Hemochron ACT.

I am the first POCT coordinator here and have been in place for 4 years. Prior to opening this position, 2 bench techs and the hematology supervisor handled the job. It took years before the request was realized (the individual that initially sought to create the position had left and another supervisor came in before management/HR approved the request.) With the complexities of CAP, a dedicated person is really needed.

In my opinion, POC requires much more administrative oversight (and therefore at LEAST a dedicated person, if not more), than even core/central laboratory departments.  With POC you have removed your initial safeguard to quality by removing the trained laboratory professional that used to perform the test and was your first defense in producing quality laboratory results/data.  As a result, it only stands to reason that the administrative oversight and monitoring required in POC must expand significantly as the knowledge and training that used to be a given with laboratory professionals must now be taught, and internalized, by staff not formally trained in laboratory medicine.  That requires significant time investment.

Jeremy.  A huge amount of overtime.  When the time is not given on the Laboratory schedule, time management is not enough to get the program up to inspection standards.

I am remarkably close to what Max is dealing with. I brought up my paystubs from last year and counted 224 hours of overtime on the year.

Well, at least the upside of hourly status is that you are paid for time worked/overtime.  If salaried, and the job invariably doesn't fit into an 8-hour day, and you end up working for free.  Personally, I would prefer an hourly setup.

Are you solely a POCC? Yes

Are you full time? hourly, or salaried? I am full-time/salary

Do you have other POCC's that work alongside you? No.  I have a Supervisor of Quality Assurance and Point of Care, but her time is mainly spent on Lab-wide Quality issues. History, we used to have 2 FT POCCs and were cited for not having sufficient POCC staff, so we got a third.  Then one POCC was promoted to Lab Manager and one resigned shortly there after.  The Supervisor was hired in place of the 2 FT POCCs.  We are due for inspection in 2017.

Do you work weekends? I am not assigned weekends but can be called for questions and may have to come in if cannot be handled by phone.

How large is your facility? 501 bed hospital

Do you oversee any clinics If so, how many?  Total program is

Based on my experience as a POCC, extra hours doesn't mean extra work done. I found that "Don't work hard; work intelligent" is a key success factor. Make the computer work for you. Utilize all the available resources to capacity. Stay creative and seek alternatives (easier solutions). Shape your environment the way it suit you. Stay lean as much as you can.

I am both POCC and generalist. I spend a lot of time trying to get POCC things done while on the bench which doesn't always work well. My supervisor is getting a little better about putting on the schedule off bench hours so it is visible to everyone else. (ie leave me alone).

My hospital is 50 bed with 10 surgical suites also.

Our organization merged with a large clinic group and they just hired a pocc position and we are wondering when more of lab things will merge including poct. It would be nice to be full time POCC and I am looking around.

I am the only person in POCC but i do have a couple people that could limp along if needed- hit by a bus theory- and I have created a what to do job aid.

I am hourly. I do work weekends but usually only 1 in 8.

If I get called in or called at home I am able to bill at time and half plus travel if I have to come in. They don't call much.