Reduce delays, conserve resources, and improve medical outcomes! Streamlines practical guidance for the selection of POCT technologies according to technical performance, patient need, and management practices! Examines best practice of POCT and offers integrative strategies, performance maps, and treatment pathways for illustrating effective rapid-response testing processes in critical care. Point-of-Care Testing discusses techniques to:

• identify potential preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical errors in POCT
• detect areas of underuse, overuse, or inappropriate provision of care
• develop effective POCT quality assurance programs

Contents

General Principles

1. Point-of-Care Testing
2. The Device Approval Process
3. Information Management and Point-of-Care Testing: Strategies for Improving Outcomes
4. Understanding and Preventing Medical Errors in Point-of-Care Testing (and the Use of FAST-QC)
5. Performance Improvement
6. Patient Care Pathways
7. Outcomes Management: The Cost–Quality Imperative
8. Point-of-Care Decision Making, Adaptive Systems, and Outcomes Optimization (and the National Directives for Improved Healthcare)

Case Studies

9. Point-of-Care Blood Gas and Electrolyte Testing: Its Effect on Patient Care and the Clinical Laboratory
10. Point-of-Care Testing in the Management of Diabetes Mellitus
11. Outcomes-Based Evaluation of Dipstick Urinalysis
12. Occult Blood
13. Hemoglobin and Coagulation
14. Point-of-Care Testing for Biochemical Markers of Acute Coronary Syndromes
15. Intraoperative Parathyroid Hormone
16. The Rationale for Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) for Drugs of Abuse and Ethyl Alcohol
17. Reproductive Testing: Ovulation and Pregnancy
18. Fetal Fibronectin

Index

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