How many full-time employees does your POCT department staff?
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I am reaching out to see if anyone would be willing to share staffing information for their Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) department.
For context, our current health system includes three freestanding hospitals (1. 321 beds, 2. 906 beds, 3. 110 beds), one free standing emergency department, and approximately 90 outpatient locations. We are reviewing our current structure and would appreciate any insight into staffing models, FTE allocations, or coverage strategies that have been effective within your organization.
Also - does your department also service outpatient locations within your organization?
Also - does your department also service outpatient locations within your organization?
Thank you in advance for any information you are willing to share.
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I have 4.8 FTE not including myself responsible for day to day point of care activities. That being said, they are not all here every day and one of those FTE is a technical specialist.
Our point of care program is also very diverse. We have waived to High complexity testing in a limited-service containment laboratory.
We do about 1100 Moderate complexity observations per year and have about 6500 total operators (waive and moderate complexity).
I'm hoping to add another 1.2 FTE this year to support our containment laboratory.
I am the administrator of POCT for the system. We run under one procedure and Medicare number.
Instruments are standardized and I also have oversite for RT blood gases. System is licensed for about 1600 but I have no idea how many of those are actually in use. We do not have any other clinics or Medical Group practices.
The other full time POCT FTE is responsible for the biggest hospital about 500 beds. The comps and the inventory etc. are her responsibility.
For the other hospitals, which vary in size, there is a Lead Tech that has POCT duties assigned as "other duties as assigned" but whose main duties are on the bench. They might get 4 hours a month to do the POCT items. Not all of them have a BS degree. For those hospitals, I have to do the demo comps. I do have about 6 grandfathered experts who are BSN who assist.
Recently, our system implemented an Assistant Director for the Hospital locations and one for the Ambulatory locations. There will be a director for Point of Care hired in the future. Our goal is to have one Medical Director (with designees at the outlying locations) so there can be more standardization in the department.
Fiscal Year volume (Sep 2024 to Aug 2025) for all tests = 2,041,824. Waived tests = 1,940,526. These are connected tests and do not take into account the manually recorded tests (urine pH, AVOX, KOH/Wet Prep, etc). This was a 6.7% increase from previous year and did not take into account our latest acquisition (275 bed, 1 FTE).
11,483 users were trained / competencies completed (by unit trainers or Point of Care staff). We have 1,396 "Trainers" for waived testing and the Point of Care staff is now responsible for all non-waived training / competencies.
I have all information in an Accomplishment Report I prepare at the end of the fiscal year. If anyone wants a copy, let me know and I will send it to you.
7 Point of Care Coordinators, 1 manager and 1 supervisor. We are adding one more POC Coordinator for 2026.
How many of you within your programs teach glucose meters? Or does Education do that teaching for the meters?
Staff: 5 CLIA Holders (3 MD, 2 PhD), 1 manager (who also oversees Phleb at 2 loc), 1 POCC, and 2 POCT Med Tech.
Locations: PEDIATRIC 366 inpatient bed hospital plus ED and outpatient offices, 4 Mod sites (inspected), and 14 waived sites, 1 mobile unit, 2 amb surgical centers (mod complex), and 1 amb infusion off-site. all span 65 miles north to south and 15 miles west of main location.
Scheduling: POCC and 1 med tech work 4x10 hr shifts (rotating weekdays off), 1 med tech works 5x8. We staff 6a-7p weekdays. We make at least once monthly rounds to each site, including a mobile unit.
Duties: POCT Staff complete Cal/Ver, Linearity, and all comparison or implementation duties, CAP PT assignment, ordering, and oversight, middleware oversight, and clerical oversight including adverse events and follow-up. They maintain QA metrics for all locations and report quarterly to a committee. They control all QC orders, lot holds, and maintain reagent stock for iSTAT, GEM, PPM, and Drugs
- Glucometer, urinalysis, viral/strep, and A1C reagent is maintained by either central supply or clinic staff.
- QC, PT, and all patient testing is completed by 3600ish enduser staff (RN, NA, APN, MD, Anesthesia, RT, and Perfusionists plus student/fellow/resident as applicable of all of these roles as well)
We assist with 1 external CLIA and we may add an additional 4 but with a calculation of a "consultant" type rate (lots of pending changes in our org).
We have a web of Nursing Practice Development (educators) who assist the POC team. They do the heavy lifting on demo, training, comps, and remediation. POCT will do remediation of PT failures and assists when they are able for our larger hiring fairs or areas who don't have a current educator. We typically only facilitate the big hire events for NA or RN 3-5 times a year. Anesthesia is our big one who we will do demos with, but they have to come to our office at a scheduled time. We will do a shared calendar for them to sign up and if they show, we demo and sign off; if they don't show or don't reschedule, they're reported to the attending or manager/Div Admin.
We also utilize the educators and nurse managers to facilitate follow-up on our adverse or non-conforming events (wrong barcode scanned, expired comp, QC not performed on time, temp not documented, cross out/correction errors, etc). We communicate all of the utilization and any non-conformances to each manager and if they have a QA specialist (most outpatient sites have one) and just have to ensure the follow-up is completed instead of doing the legwork ourselves.
We also recently went to QC and User lockouts where we can it is has saved us about 8 hours weekly of review in the middleware.
Would you please share the end of year Accomplishment Report that you created for your department? My email is woodwars@musc.edu
Thank you,
Shea Woodward