At Mayo Clinic, RFID Slashes Error Rate

The endoscopy unit is still employing the RFID system, and has deployed as many as 30,000 RFID bottles to date. Although implementing RFID specimen bottles at other Mayo Clinic hospitals and departments will add costs (the outpatient endoscopy unit alone processes more than 30,000 specimen bottles annually that are sent for pathologic review), Francis says the benefits of using RFID outweigh the expense. Patient safety is the number one goal, she adds, and reducing errors certainly helps to achieve that goal—but RFID also helps lower costs.

Dr. SchuylerO. Sanderson

Using a paper-based manual system had required the clinic's lab staff to spend approximately 3.5 minutes per case to identify and rectify errors, which adds up to about one-half of a full-time lab technician's annual work hours. When the unit switched to the RFID system, Francis says, "there was such a huge reduction of errors, and that saves time. We could eliminate the cost of half a person's lab salary."

The researchers' findings were presented at the 2008 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Meeting, held Oct. 3-8, in Orlando, Fla.

The two-phased study followed an RFID pilot in 2006, in which the Rochester Mayo Clinic employed the same passive RFID tags from 3M to track patients' gastrointestinal tissue specimens (see At Mayo Clinic, RFID Tracks Biopsies). According to Sanderson, that project was a limited deployment of the RFID system within the endoscopy practice.

"We had installed the system in only five endoscopy suites, and in the laboratory," he explains. "The major difference between the two studies is the extent of the system installation and the volume experienced. The new study allowed for the transition from the conventional paper-based requisition form that accompanied all specimens to a paperless system supported by the RFID system. The migration to a paperless requisition system has allowed the practice to appreciate the efficiencies associated with such, and to see a dramatic improvement in our labeling discrepancies. The full deployment also allowed for the realization of specimen tracking for three separate practice locations within Rochester to gain view of in-process delivery."