Assessment of economic parameters of clinical diagnostic laboratory before and after introduction of the lean manufacturing elements

Background: Economic parameters play an important role in the assessment of the laboratory as a single center of financial responsibility. At the moment, the primary direction of development is the introduction of lean manufacturing principles. The main goal of these principles is to organize processes and obtain results that are optimal in terms of price and/or time with the most efficient use of resources.

Aim: The work aimed to evaluate the economic parameters of the clinical diagnostic laboratory of the multidisciplinary medical center before and after introduction of lean manufacturing elements.

Materials and methods: The economic parameters of the laboratory for the specified periods before and after the introduction of lean manufacturing elements were evaluated for the following indicators: absolute and relative economic efficiency, the number of tests per one visit in outpatient care, the number of tests per one hospitalized patient, the cost of one laboratory test, the reagents and consumables cost.

Results: Assessing the effectiveness of lean manufacturing elements in the clinical diagnostic laboratory revealed a relative economic efficiency of 49.3% (23,471.6 thousand rubles) in 2021 compared with 2020 and 31.83% (8,970 thousand rubles) in 2022. If to consider economic parameters comparing the periods of 2021 and 2020, the following features are noteworthy: the number of outpatient visits in 2021 was 2.74% higher than in 2020, while the volume of polyclinic laboratory tests decreased by about 1%; the number of tests per inpatient remained at the same level, 44.08 tests in 2020, 43.0 tests in 2021; despite a 45% increase in the cost of consumables, the cost per test increased by only 5% in 2022 compared with 2021, which corresponds to the process optimization, reduction in retest series, and duplicate tests.

Conclusion: Based on the main clinical diagnostic laboratory economic parameters analysis, the lean management in the organization of laboratory work, namely value stream mapping, loss-making stage analysis methods, introduction of new solutions, work standardization, was shown to be effective.