AMY PICHORA: From the beginning, my career has been driven by my desire to use my total skillset – obtained from working for healthcare institutions from trauma centers to hospital networks to reference laboratories – to help labs continuously improve their processes, deliver better patient care, and become great places to work. Working at Abbott has enabled me to grow and evolve while staying true to my original mission of helping labs elevate performance.

AMY PICHORA: I manage a team of nine Technical Solutions Designers who support laboratories in Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil and Argentina. This affords me the opportunity to become intimately involved with over 90 different sites, across the full spectrum of lab profiles, each year.  

Our analysis draws on multiple data sources. It’s not just about what we observe. We converse with staff. We use our LEAN Six Sigma methodologies to enhance data collection. This multi-faceted approach gives us an actionable picture of what’s going on in the lab.

Because our team has been fortunate to be exposed to a variety of labs and workflows, we’re able to identify non-value-added processes. I’m referring here to situations in which a lab is doing something a certain way not because it’s the best way to do it, but because that’s how it’s always been done – a phenomena that is sometimes referred to as “the Hidden Factory.” We uncover these Hidden Factories and help labs use more efficient processes, which in turn leads to elevated performance.

AMY PICHORA: While each market has its own unique landscape, we see two common trends that are impacting lab operations. One is consolidation. For example, in Canada, we see main hospital labs looking at their smaller satellite labs and trying to determine how they can operate more efficiently. A second dynamic that we see across markets is downward pressure on the cost of care. For labs, this means finding ways to be more efficient, especially with respect to patient care.

AMY PICHORA: To address market dynamics like consolidation and cost pressure, labs need to view their operations holistically. You need to see the big picture and focus on the elements that add the most value. This starts with having someone who is responsible for studying the lab’s end-to-end process or “value stream.” It also requires solutions that support this kind of big picture analysis and identify the critical metrics that drive continuous improvement. The better visibility you have to your operation as a whole, the more effectively you can plan to adapt to disruptive changes in the marketplace. That’s what future proofing is all about.