The Flin Flon General Hospital is bringing more efficiency and confidentiality to the process of diagnosing patients.
Later this week, the hospital’s newly refurbished lab and lab waiting room opens with redeveloped space and more modern equipment.
“It’s going to be way more organized,” says Christine Whitbread, charge technologist for the lab.
The revamped waiting room, serving patients who need x-rays, ultrasounds and lab work such as blood and urine tests, is unrecognizable from its previous incarnation.
The waiting room now offers ample seating room. Nearby, two new blood-drawing rooms have been established, compared to the single room that previously existed.
Staff hope the extra room will mean patients getting blood drawn can move through twice
as fast.
Lois Moberly, executive director of clinical services for the hospital, says the layout of the room improves patient confidentiality, as the receptionist, waiting area and blood-drawing facility are no longer “so condensed.”
In the past, patients asked to provide a urine sample were given a cup by the waiting room receptionist and asked to walk down the hallway to a washroom.
Patients will still use the washroom down the hall, but now instead of bringing the urine sample back, they will place it in a metal slot connecting the washroom with the lab.
Inside the lab itself, where most of the public will never see, renovations have expanded available cupboard and cabinet space, enhancing the workflow for staff.
An upgraded HVAC system improves the air quality and temperature. The lab also gains a new computer system, not to mention a pair of new hematology analyzers, used to perform certain blood work samples.
In conjunction with those upgrades, the lab will connect to a provincial computer network that allows doctors across Manitoba to access a Flin Flon patient’s test results, and vice-versa.
“It’s a lot less waiting time for the patients,” says Whitbread. “They don’t have to have their blood redrawn [elsewhere] because [a doctor] can’t find the report. It’s all on the computer.”
With an overall budget of $638,000, the lab and waiting room renovations began in July. Manitoba Health provided the funding.
The work meant some inconveniences for patients and staff, with diagnostic services temporarily spread across different locations at the hospital.
The hospital lab is operated by Diagnostic Services of Manitoba (DSM), the not-for-profit corporation responsible for all of the province’s front-line public laboratory and rural diagnostic imaging services.
Whitbread estimates that between 80 and 100 patients are served by the lab on an average day.
The lab will be closed to the public Dec. 3 and 4, allowing equipment to be moved in. It reopens Dec. 5.
