POCT in Rural Health

I oversee a group of 38 rural clinics in NM. The testers are usually the MAs (medical assistants). Some of the providers are physicians, but many are nurse practitioners, and those often do testing as well. We do train all the providers in the testing, but if they don't do patient tests we don't have them do annual competency. The devices we use are Sofia for flu A/B, covid, strep A, and sometimes RSV, Afinion for A1C, Clinitek for UA, and they do manual testing for urine pregnancy, urine drug screen, and some sites do manual strep A. Some of the sites also do glucose and/or hemoglobin on the Hemocue, and some do Coaguchek INR. The biggest issues we have are documentation-everything is manually resulted and documented on logs; and temperature incursions on the fridges and sometimes room temperature. We also have some issues with ensuring everyone does annual competency on time. The teams often cover more than one site, and that gets tricky trying to make sure the appropriate competencies for each site are completed and documented. They do a tremendous job for these rural areas.

Hello Keishla,
I am unsure I'm able to address all the questions you have related to POCT in rural health areas but willing to give it a shot. 
In my health system, we do not use nonwaived POCT in rural areas except for PPMP CLIAs/PPM 'lab' testing, just so you know in advance (although I'm happy to discuss the challenges/reasons we do not go that route).
pmann@utmb.edu
Peggy