Nothing is more basic to safe and effective patient care than ensuring that the caregiver is performing the right procedure on the intended patient. Misidentification of patients, laboratory specimens, surgical sites, and medications is a fundamental defect throughout the healthcare system, causing many preventable adverse events.  The effects of misidentification can be catastrophic.

Errors that occur prior to analysis within the laboratory, particularly identification errors, are the most common serious laboratory errors (Bonini, Clin Chem 2002).  The effects of misidentification in the specimen identification processes include incompatible blood transfusions or tissue donations, misdiagnoses, missed diagnoses, missed or unnecessary treatments, and serious medication errors.

Bridge Specimen Collections is a solution that assures an accurate and permanent link between patients and their laboratory specimens, in order to prevent identification errors of laboratory samples.  At the time of specimen collection, the healthcare professional scans the patient's bar-coded bracelet and, using a small portable, wireless, or tethered printer, prints out the appropriate specimen container labels at the bedside. Printing only the labels that are necessary to complete the specimen collection process greatly decreases the potential to mislabel a patient’s samples with another patient’s collection labels.

The increased accuracy of bedside labeling and elimination of handwritten specimen labels result in important safety benefits, as well as fewer re-draws for patients and improved efficiency in the laboratory.

Bridge Specimen Collections can extend the capabilities of legacy laboratory information systems to the point of care. This solution has been interfaced with many of the major LIS vendors, providing positive patient identification for laboratory specimens that are then processed with minimal handling in the laboratory, streamlining the receipt process.

This solution enhances the safety and accuracy of the specimen collections process by employing bar-code scanning technology, wireless networks and clinical information system integration to prevent potential patient identification and specimen collection errors at the bedside. The technology:

• Eliminates re-draws and sample labeling errors through positive patient identification
• Decreases laboratory re-work and costs resulting from mislabeled specimens
• Improves productivity without paperwork and accounting for all printed labels
• Reduces training time and ensures compliance by promoting a standard specimen collection process, guiding through each step
• Provides on-screen collection instructions for proper specimen handling
• Allows cancellation of specimen collection requests
• Interfaces with laboratory information systems to receive real-time specimen collection requests and to send accurate, legible collection information, eliminating the need to transcribe collector ID and date and time of collection confirmation  in the laboratory
• Enables positive patient identification for sample collection prior to order placement, e.g., in the Emergency Department