2026-03-12

Where the TAT clock should start on a busy accession bench

In many Ho Chi Minh City hospital laboratories the first barcode scan happens at a window facing the ward runner. That scan is a receipt event. The laboratory information system may accession the order minutes later, after a clerk checks the request form. Centrifugation may wait until a batch fills the rotor.

Turnaround-time reporting falls apart when leadership treats those three moments as one. A chemistry panel that sat ten minutes at the window and twenty minutes in an unspun rack will look ‘slow at the analyzer’ if the clock starts at accession.

Agree the start with the people who stamp tubes. Write it on the huddle board. If the hospital insists on order-to-release for clinicians, keep a second laboratory clock for internal delay. Two clocks are honest. One blurred clock is not.