The Molecular Pathology Department has performed more than 300,000 tests since last March.
While people may wait a week or more in other areas of the country for their COVID-19 test results, Intermountain is getting results back to patients in two to three days. That fast turnaround time comes thanks, in part, to redeployed caregivers who sacrifice by working overtime on night shifts, weekends, and even holidays.
Tara Hall is the supervisor for Intermountain’s Molecular Pathology Department, which is where COVID-19 tests are performed. When the pandemic began to take over our lives and the need for testing suddenly was great, she says her department had to ramp up quickly and get additional qualified people to help.
“At the beginning of all the shutdowns my department was just crazy,” she says. “We were trying to bring on this new test we've never run before. After we got the test validated, the testing requests were quite high and we didn’t have enough staff to keep up with the demand.”
In April, her department began to get help from caregivers from other Intermountain laboratories and facilities.
“We wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the testing demands without all of these caregivers,” Tara says. “A lot of them work on our graveyard shifts, on weekends, and on holidays. A lot of personal sacrifices have been made so we could keep up and give our patients the best care.”
What these caregivers do to perform COVID-19 testing is highly specialized and only people with the right qualifications can be put to work in the lab. She says 90 qualified caregivers have been redeployed at one time or another to help with COVID-19 testing during the last few months and it has made a big difference.
Tara Hall, the supervisor for Intermountain's Molecular Pathology Department, thanks redeployed caregivers for the help they've offered with COVID-19 testing.
Often they get results back to patients in 36 hours. The team has performed more than 300,000 COVID-19 tests since bringing the testing began in March, she says.
Intermountain has hired more new caregivers to work in the Molecular Pathology Department and the test processing is becoming more automated as they get new equipment.
What are often referred to as testing sites are really collection sites, she says. The testing of the specimens is happening at the Central Lab in Murray. The samples are tested, 96 at a time, and a person with a doctorate reviews each test run to ensure quality.
“It’s nice to know when the pressure was on and the need was greatest we could count on people to go the extra mile to help our patients quickly get this critical information,” Tara says. “Timely testing results are critical to our efforts to control this virus and these caregivers have stepped up when we needed them most.”
Intermountain conducts about 44 percent of the COVID-19 testing done in Utah.
Alicia Simon, Central Lab director, says Tara’s team and the people who’ve been redeployed have been “amazing.”
“They’ve taken everything in stride,” she says. “In the lab we tend to do things very methodically and slowly because we're very conservative. We couldn't do that to our patients with COVID-19 tests, we had to move faster. We have to be more nimble. And they completely took it in stride. It’s been hard. A lot of people had to do double shifts and not take days off, but they did what they had to do to keep up with the volume.”