• Online Features  This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (5)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letters  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Pathology & Laboratory Medicine  • Surgery  • Surgery, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Reducing the Cost of Daily Phlebotomy

Elizabeth A. Stuebing, MD, MPH; Thomas J. Miner, MD

Arch Surg. 2011;146(5):524-527. doi:10.1001/archsurg.2011.103

Objective  To determine whether simply being made continually aware of the hospital costs of daily phlebotomy would reduce the amount of phlebotomy ordered for nonintensive care unit surgical patients.

Design  Prospective observational study.

Setting  Tertiary care hospital in an urban setting.

Participants  All nonintensive care unit patients on 3 general surgical services.

Intervention  A weekly announcement to surgical house staff and attending physicians of the dollar amount charged to nonintensive care unit patients for laboratory services during the previous week.

Main Outcome Measure  Dollars charged per patient per day for routine blood work.

Results  At baseline, the charges for daily phlebotomy were $147.73/patient/d. After 11 weeks of residents being made aware of the daily charges for phlebotomy, the charges dropped as low as $108.11/patient/d. This had a correlation coefficient of –0.76 and significance of P = .002. Over 11 weeks of intervention, the dollar amount saved was $54 967.

Conclusion  Health care providers being made aware of the cost of phlebotomy can decrease the amount of these tests ordered and result in significant savings for the hospital.

Author Affiliations: DeWitt Daughtry Family Department of Surgery, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, Florida (Dr Stuebing); and Department of Surgery, Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (Dr Miner).

CiteULike    Connotea    Delicious    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED LETTERS

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Monsters and Surgical Vampires
Gabrielle R. Schaefer, Heidi L. Matus, Celine Goetz, and Vineet M. Arora
Arch Surg. 2011;146(11):1333.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Monsters and Surgical Vampires—Reply
Elizabeth Ann Stuebing
Arch Surg. 2011;146(11):1333-1334.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

RELATED ARTICLE

Modern Day Bloodletting: Is That Laboratory Test Necessary?: Comment on "Surgical Vampires and Rising Health Care Expenditure"
A. Benedict Cosimi
Arch Surg. 2011;146(5):527.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Do Physicians Need a "Shopping Cart" for Health Care Services?
Brook
JAMA 2012;307:791-792.
FULL TEXT  

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Monsters and Surgical Vampires
Schaefer et al.
Arch Surg 2011;146:1333-1333.
FULL TEXT  

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Monsters and Surgical Vampires--Reply
Stuebing
Arch Surg 2011;146:1333-1334.
FULL TEXT