Lab Collection Process

Note: See Labs for more general info on the labs data.

The Critical Care database counts the laboratory tests listed at S_AllLabs for every patient for their entire LOS in a unit. (E.G. total number of CBC diff done during LOS in unit). A different collection of labs is collected at HSC than elsewhere. Some lab data at HSC is imported directly.

Lab Collection Process

• For every ICU patient,
  • for every laboratory test on S_AllLabs
    • enter the lab
    • enter the number of times the test was performed

Limited number of labs

Only 24 labs can actually be sent in. You can collect as many as you want, but only those with the highest priority will actually be sent.

Which labs should be given preference

On the rare occasion more than 24 different labs are performed on a patient.

Since we cross-check labs against the TISS, all the labs that are referenced on the TISS need to be sent.

As for the rest, the labs are collected mostly for a cost estimate, so the most expensive ones are of most interest to us. Apparently a request for up-to-date lab costs has been in to the lab people for some time, but there are difficulties in getting an answer. Once we have updated costs, we would actually change the CCMDB.mdb so it would pick the most important labs automatically based on cost, much like we are now doing for comorbids.