Diagnostics lab chain

Each branch ran its own way. At the front desk a booking meant writing the patient’s name, the tests ordered, and the referring doctor into a register. Samples were labelled by hand and logged in one book when they were collected, then again when they moved to the branch that could run the test. The doctor’s name sat in the booking register, and the amount owed to that doctor was worked out later from those same pages. Head office had none of it until a branch phoned the numbers in or sent the day’s totals.

Because every branch kept its own paper, head office was always looking at yesterday or the day before. When a sample was sent to another branch for a test, no one could say where it was or whether the report was ready, so patients were told to call back while staff hunted through registers. Doctor payouts were the worst of it. At month-end the accountant sat with stacks of booking registers from every branch, matched each test to the doctor who referred it, and added up what was due, and that took most of a week. Mistakes were easy to make, a doctor would question a figure, and the branch and head office went back and forth over which register was right.

Now every branch books tests in the same system. The moment a patient is registered, the tests and the referring doctor are recorded together, and the sample gets a tag the system follows from collection through to the finished report. Staff at any branch can see where a sample is and whether its report is done, so patients get a straight answer instead of being asked to call back. Head office sees each booking as it happens, not days later.

The doctor referral payout that used to take the accountant most of a week is now worked out by the system as bookings come in, so month-end is a matter of checking and paying rather than adding up registers by hand. Because the figure comes from the same booking every branch entered, there is nothing for a doctor to question and no back and forth between branch and head office. The owner opens one screen and sees every branch live: what was booked, which samples are moving, and what is owed to each doctor. The owner sees every branch on one screen, whether the lab runs two branches or ten.