| Hospital laboratories are experiencing increases in workload, decreases in qualified staff, and constant pressure to deliver results to the patient's medical record faster than ever (reduce turnaround times). For this reason, it is critical for hospital laboratories to find ways, through technology, to operate more efficiently while maintaining high levels of quality while reducing the turnaround time (TAT) of the test results that they produce. Unfortunately, there is no established method with which to choose the most appropriate technology. The use of the fit-viability theory to assess technology investments seemed a likely solution to the problem facing hospital laboratory administrators. The purpose of this quantitative, repeated measure, study was to adapt the use of the fit-viability theory from using the correlation between fit and viability to predict success, to using viability and success (outcome) to predict a good technology fit. For this study, viability was determined by the implementation cost of each technology, and success (outcome) was determined by the technology's effect on turnaround times (TATs). TAT data needed to be collected because of the lack of comparable turnaround time data for each of the technologies in this study. The TAT archival data retrieved from the laboratory's computer system, did not contain patient health information, did not impact patient care, and did not require patient interaction. After collecting the TAT data from all targeted tests in a given month, analysis of the mean reduction values for each technology to the mean viability of each technology occurred, in order to determine which technology is the best fit for the hospital laboratory. Both the ANOVA and ANCOVA data showed statistically significant ( p <0.01) differences in technologies, thereby rejecting the null hypothesis (H10, and H20), and confirming the alternative hypothesis (H1a and H2a). Future studies should focus on expanding into other laboratory departments to gain a more complete picture as to the impact of some of the technologies on TATs. Finally, this adaption of the FVT allows researchers to be able to modify their studies to assess any of the three (fit, viability, outcome) FVT factors when the other two are known. |
