Orillia centre speeds up lines using handheld tech

ORILLIA, Ont. – The Couchiching COVID-19 Assessment Centre at Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital (OSMH) announced that it has gone live with handheld devices for the creation of digitized COVID-19 Lab requisitions, as part of the Province’s Lab Automation project. It is an important step forward in improving the quality and performance of end-to-end testing for patients, care providers and labs.

Working with Ontario Health, OSMH has partnered to introduce handheld technology and barcoded labels for all COVID-19 tests performed at the Assessment Centre. Staff are excited to have the new technology deployed as they can now collect a patient’s information by scanning their health card and driver’s license, capturing everything needed for a digital lab requisition.

“As the demand for testing increases, this new technology enables us to increase our capacity allowing us to complete more tests each day,” said Carmine Stumpo, OSMH president and CEO.

The Orillia Assessment Centre, which also conducts outreach testing to local Long-Term Care and Retirement Homes, has completed nearly 12,000 tests since the pandemic was first declared.

CTV News reported that the COVID testing centre processed its most ever tests in a single day at 300 in mid-September, and with the new technology, staff believe they can bump that up to 500 per day. (At the end of July, it was processing 150 tests per day, using a manual system.)

The benefits of the new technology include:

• More complete and higher-quality data when capturing patient information
• Reducing manual data entry for staff by 50%, resulting in faster processing and easier matching of the requisition to the test. With the help of the scanner, it’s now taking five minutes for testing, down from 12 minutes earlier.
• More legible requisitions, making it easier for laboratory staff to process each test

OSMH is among the first Assessment Centres in Ontario to adopt the new electronic model. When coming to the Assessment Centre to be tested, members of the public bring their Ontario Health Card and driver’s license. They can access their testing results using their Ontario Health Card number on the provincial online portal at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/ or by calling your healthcare provider.