PCL Alverno to highlight successful partnership with Beckman Coulter Diagnostics at Lab Quality Confab 2016

PCL Alverno (Hammond, Ind.), recipient of the prestigious ADVANCE Laboratory of the Year award for 2016, will share its strategies for implementing a culture of continuous improvement and lab efficiency at the 10^th Anniversary Lab Quality Confab, held October 18-19, 2016, in New Orleans. The talk will feature the successful partnership between PCL Alverno and Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, a global leader in the clinical diagnostics industry.

Director of Quality Assurance at PCL Alverno, Don Lair, Jr., will lead the session, titled, “Our Journey to Implement the Culture of Continuous Improvement in 26 Hospital Labs and the Alverno Central Lab: What’s Worked Best for Us With Methods and Metrics.”

Lair will chronicle the challenges faced by one of the largest regional laboratory networks in the Midwest, as it sought to drive performance across multiple facilities with different needs and test volumes. Standardization of test instrumentation and IT infrastructure along with the development of unifying culture of continuous improvement have proven to be the key ingredients to Alverno’s success.

This transformation has been accomplished in partnership with Beckman Coulter, using the principles and tools of the Danaher Business System (DBS) model employed by Beckman Coulter, which Alverno adopted.

“DBS is a tremendous tool we adopted through our partnership with Beckman Coulter. With it, our team unleashed a unique set of skills that are driven by Lean strategies, but in fact, are so much more. We have been involved with Lean for more than a decade, with great success, but never at the level we’re seeing today, and never with results so quickly,” said Sam Terese, President and CEO of Alverno.

The DBS is a philosophy, set of values and series of management processes utilized by Danaher Corporation and Beckman Coulter. The success of the DBS philosophy has been heralded in a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the Harvard Business Review. DBS in the laboratory builds and sustains a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement. The result is improved quality, speed to results, operational efficiency, physician satisfaction and, ultimately, patient care.

The attendees of Lab Quality Confab are invited to learn more about the application of DBS to laboratory operations at the Beckman Coulter booth.