Medical Courier Operations: Every Outreach Lab and Hospital is Unique

When it comes to medical courier operations, MCE understands that outreach labs and hospitals do things as different as the samples they collect. All labs and hospitals have their own special requirements for routing, specimen collection/transportation, supply deliveries, and management in general. Truly, no two systems are alike. Differences in operational expectations can be attributed to varying needs of customers, interpretations of CLIA and CAP guidelines, management styles, internal requirements for efficiency, budgets, and thresholds for mistakes.

Protocols and standards vary between operations and what works for one lab may not necessarily work for another. For instance, with specimen tracking, some labs prefer bulk container scanning because they value courier efficiency while other labs require couriers to scan each hazmat bag individually to ensure accountability and to provide customers with proof of pick-up and delivery. Smaller labs still sometimes use paper logs to verify pick-up. Empty lockbox? Some labs require couriers to take pictures of empty lockboxes to prove there were no specimens to be acquired while others are ok for couriers to move on to the next location. Customer signature? Some must have it, and others do not.

Additionally, consider routing and courier management. Some labs require courier stops at all customer locations regardless of drive-time or if there is a specimen on-site, because they value face time with the customer. Others require certain customers to be visited only if they call in for a pick-up.  Lab size is also a factor in how couriers are routed. Labs with 3 or more couriers typically require an electronic system to ensure efficient routing and dispatching, while labs with 1 or 2 couriers can still manage routing manually.

Furthermore, courier management styles are a broad spectrum as well. Some managers want to know every stop a courier has been on, their drive time, and their how long they were there. Others just simply need to see that a site was visited. Supply tracking? Some labs value it, some do not.  EMR integration? Some labs think it is a nice feature, but others demand it.

In our 15+ years of working with outreach labs and hospitals, MCE has seen a multitude of ways of running courier operations. With that has come a rainbow of requests for various features and options within the MCE system to meet each unique need.

So how does a software and mobile app company handle a niche market like medical couriers that require a system with so many variables? The simple answer is with a commitment to customer satisfaction and excellence.

MCE believes that challenges can shape you and make you better. Greatness is forged in the fire. Our philosophy has always been that if a customer has a need for a new feature, then we should do everything in our power to accommodate it. Our reasoning is that if one customer has a need, then most likely so do others, even if they do not know it yet.

Constantly improving MCE based on customers’ requests is our commitment and at no charge to the lab.  As stated before, if one customer needs it, so does another. The value of adding a feature never benefits just one lab, it really benefits all. Plus, with MCE all new features are offered to all customers….old and new.

When it comes down to it, it is really the unique customer requests integrated into  MCE over the past 15 years that has made our software and mobile app system stand out above all other courier systems. MCE was not designed just for medical couriers operating in lab outreach and hospital systems it was designed by them.

Schedule a Web Demo of MCE

Check-out all the unique features MCE’s mobile app and software system along with the Honeywell CT40 mobile computer has to offer your medical courier operations with a free web demo. Contact us today at: https://medicalcourier.com/contact/.