Annual increase of patients seen in an outpatient clinical laboratory.

Abstract

Introduction: The service provided by the clinical laboratory is essential within the health services and its amount of work grows due to the ageing of the population and the increase of patients with chronic diseases. 

Objective: To determine the annual increase in outpatients at the clinical laboratory of HRH from  September 2020 to December 2022.

Methods: A retrospective descriptive study was conducted with a non-experimental design. Information was collected from patients of the outpatient department of the laboratory at HRH, and the most performed tests and the monthly number of patients
were determined.

Results: The average number of patients seen monthly in the outpatient department varied between 1099 and 3120 patients. Most of the patients were female (61.71 %) with an average age of 52.32 years, and the largest proportion of the patients were within the 51-60 age range. Most patients were from the David district, representing (65.82 %) of the total sample. The general chemistry and hematology sections were the ones that processed the highest amount of tests during that period of time.

Conclusion: There is a growing demand for the clinical laboratory service at HRH. Monthly variations and a significant increase in patient influx are observed after the pandemic period. Most of the patients were adult women, and the most requested laboratory tests during this period were processed in the general chemistry and hematology sections