How Can a Phlebotomist Benefit Your Physician’s Office?
Having your blood drawn can be a nightmare! Many attempts, tiny veins, dehydrated and collapsing veins. All these can keep your patients from following through with blood draws when they leave the physician’s office. This adds to the difficulty of caring for patients with complex medical problems.
Have you thought about adding a phlebotomist to your clinic or practice? This article will look at what a phlebotomist does and how that can add value for your patients.
Read on for a more thorough look at the phlebotomist role.
What Is a Phlebotomist?
A phlebotomist is a professional who draws blood from a patient for testing ordered by a physician. This process is called venipuncture.
Labs, physician’s offices, clinics, and hospitals are the most frequent employers for phlebotomists. The Bureau of Labor Standards predicts that the demand for phlebotomists will grow by 17% between 2019 and 2029.
Phlebotomists can do a wide assortment of things besides drawing blood for lab testing. For example, they can assist in measuring blood pressure, temperature, and other vitals for your patients. Sometimes they are called on to assist in transfusions. A phlebotomist can administer another testing, like nasal or throat swabs, as well.
At times a phlebotomist can even run basic blood work and other tests when they have the equipment available. Also, a phlebotomist can help maintain OSHA compliance in the office by ensuring proper techniques are followed.
COVID Challenges
Many doctor’s offices were harmed by the challenges that COVID presented. Patients were reluctant to come into the physician’s office at all. Those that did were often non-compliant with doctor’s orders for blood work or other labs.
Patients did not want to go to another place where they could be exposed to the virus. Also, for patients with significant health issues, missing their routine lab work meant missing opportunities for medication or other changes in care.
COVID also brought the importance of handling testing samples safely to the forefront. As a result, a phlebotomist can focus on safety and contagious disease controls for the office and ensure compliance.
Having a skilled phlebotomist on staff is one way that a doctor can make sure that the patient can get needed labwork without an extra trip for their patient. This will continue to be true even when COVID becomes less challenging for doctors and patients.
Phlebotomists can also provide other services that free up your other staff members. They can help ensure OSHA standards. in handling possible infectious substances. This means they can help compliance rates improve for inspections.
Many labs also offer home draws for patients who have difficulty getting out of their homes.
Phlebotomists and the ‘Difficult Draw’
Because phlebotomists have great and specialized training, they can draw from a wide variety of patients. However, young children and the elderly can be difficult to obtain blood with just one poke. We know a young child can become combative if the first attempt is unsuccessful, and it might leave them traumatized.
A phlebotomist is trained in techniques to help calm patients with anxiety or fear caused by the thought of having blood work drawn. As a result, they can work with nurses when a patient (such as a child) needs more than one person present during the draw.
Having a phlebotomist on staff frees your nurses and aides to concentrate on other tasks with patients. It also means that patients receive more services at once and makes them comfortable visiting their doctor’s offices.
Patients today prefer one-stop shopping. They are more likely to recommend a doctor’s office to their peers if they can get everything done at one visit.
Practicing at the Top of Their Licensing
Because phlebotomists can provide various lab-oriented services, your other employees are free to practice at the top of their licensing. Your office can enjoy having someone trained in these areas rather than have an RN or LPN working on OSHA compliance and blood draws.
The phlebotomist can help with obtaining and recording vitals. They can speak with physicians to understand orders and make sure that the testing is correct for the results the doctor is trying to get.
A phlebotomist can also enter the results from testing into the Electronic Medical Record and ensure that orders are current. This frees other employees to spend time with and provide more value to the patients.
For even more ideas of how to use a phlebotomist in your practice, check this out.
How Can I Add a Phlebotomist to My Physician’s Office?
A phlebotomist adds value to a physician’s office, but the complexities of hiring another staff member can be a hassle. Still, the benefits outweigh the difficulty of hiring. We can help you by providing a trained and certified phlebotomist to your office.
We provide home and facility blood draws and can even provide a phlebotomist for your office. When you use our services, you can access your patient’s lab results through our portal.
No hassle of making sure your phlebotomist is certified and trained.
No worry that the new employee needs to be trained on the basics of handling a variety of patients. No advertising and interviewing or trying to make sure that a candidate is detail-oriented. No worry that your new hire is able to handle the complexities of OSHA compliance.
We are happy to sit down with you and find out how we can help you offer extra value to your patients and raise your rates of testing compliance. We would love to talk with you about partnering or even supplying a trained and certified phlebotomist to your physician’s office. Contact us today.