Marion County Public Health Department’s Public Health Laboratory (MCPHD-PHL) Case Study

Enabling A Smarter Public Health Laboratory

About the Customer

The Marion County Public Health Department’s Public Health Laboratory (MCPHD-PHL) provides clinical, environmental microbiology and chemistry laboratory services to all Marion County, Indiana, public health department programs and other local health agencies.  Dedicated to helping the residents of Marion County achieve and maintain an optimal level of wellness, MCPHD-PHL administers testing to one million residents. 

Client Situation

The process to track instruments, maintain equipment, and log daily lab operations across several analytical areas and lab sites involved an out-of-date database and paper logbooks.  For lab management and front-line staff, this made answering report requests, accessing records and keeping up with equipment performance/maintenance time intensive and challenging. 

As part of their Continuous Quality Improvement approach, they decided to adopt a new system to streamline the way they tracked instruments, maintained equipment, and logged daily lab operations. 

MCPHD-PHL sought out Gauge’s help with implementing a web-based asset management solution that would allow for management reporting, track the physical location of assets, and create and assign standardized maintenance schedules.

How Gauge Made a Difference

Gauge implanted their Smart Hub solution, adapting its look and feel to suit a lab environment, then got to work designing and setting up reports to be easily accessible by management and staff. 

With the click of a button, MCPHD-PHL could now access a complete inventory report for all clinics and view schedules for equipment maintenance, calibration, and warranty renewal. To ensure continuity, the new system allowed them to use information from their previous database as well as gave them the ability to export the entire database when needed.

Results

Having Gauge Smart Hub in place allowed MCPHD-PHL to be more agile and prepared to serve their community. Now that management and staff were freed from time- and energy-intensive asset management, they could pursue other mission-critical improvement projects.

By switching to Gauge Smart Hub, MCPHD-PHL was able to:

• Pull asset information in 10 minutes.
• Respond to asset information requests in less than 1 day (as opposed to weeks under the old system).
• Free up management and staff time to pursue other priorities and initiatives. 
• Centralize purchasing and negotiations, supplying the entire department in less than 7 days.
• Narrow personal protective equipment (PPE) vendors from 37 down to one vendor and automate monthly deliveries, freeing up time for the Central Purchasing Department.
• Use stock rotation to keep 30 days of fresh PPE stocked at all times, enhancing MCPHD-PHL’s public health readiness.

Quotes 

“Gauge was great to work with and helped us customize a solution for our asset management needs. Smart Hub allowed us to streamline operations and expand services without increasing our overall operating budget. We’ve been using Smart Hub for five  years now. It clearly has become an integral part of the Public Health Laboratory’s operations.”—Joan Trendell, Bureau Chief, Population Health"

Numbers/Stats to Highlight

• 10 minutes to access asset information
• From weeks to less than 1 day response time for asset information requests