Is there a benchmark or community standard for the percentage of stat tests relative to total workload?
Our overseas military hospital would probably be most comparable to a small community hospital. Editor’s Note: This question was referred to the CAP Practice Management Committee. Following are committee members’ responses. A. Our laboratory performs 1.9 million billable tests per year. Our stat testing, which we feel is higher than the norm, is 22 percent of the total. Because our institution is a trauma center and has a large, busy emergency department, our percentage of stat tests is likely higher than usual. A. The ratio of stat testing to total testing varies depending on the nature of the clinical services provided by the hospital, the laboratory testing menu, and the scope of point-of-care testing performed. For a large hospital laboratory such as ours, stat testing may range from as low as 25 percent to more than 50 percent of total testing volume. Changing physician ordering practices and improving turnaround times for routine testing can reduce stat ordering. We have reduced
