Frontline workers deserve better

This is my account of a recent visit to one of the locations of LabCorp and how we observed that the people are making things work (and making a difference), where the system and technology are failing us miserably.

It was a Saturday morning, we were going through the morning routines, and Meghana suddenly realized that we had our cardiologist appointments next week on Friday and still needed to get our bloodwork done. Generally, we set up these reminders well in advance, but this time we missed them. She looked for an available LabCorp location that was a little farther than our regular location but was open on Saturdays. So, we arrived at this location to get our bloodwork done around 8:45 AM.

Being across from a hospital and considering this was a weekend, it did have a few people waiting ahead of us. We noticed a line at the check-in window even though there were self-check-in kiosks. Soon, we realized that the kiosks were not working, so people lined up at the window to check-in. When we tried to use the kiosks, the system crashed multiple times on various screens. We lined up for the window check-in to ensure we were covered.

The lady at the check-in counter saw us all, about 8 or 10 people, lining up and kept telling us to use the kiosk. We informed her that it wasn’t working, so we had to be checked in manually to ensure we weren’t missing our spot. She asked some people their names, and a few of them had gone through even if the tablet application crashed, so she asked them to sit and wait for their names to be called. I wasn’t one of them, so she assured me I could walk in when Meghana’s name was called.

While we were waiting in line, we noticed she was taking quite some time to process the only lady ahead of me, and she kept apologizing about her “slow computer.” Then she would turn back to one of her colleagues and talk to her about a few things/patients, and we kept wondering what was happening!!

As requested, we took seats and waited for our names to be called. While we were waiting, here are some of the things we noticed:

1. The rate at which people came in was higher than when they were being registered or served.
2. Anyone whose name was being called wasn’t necessarily being served. They were either checking them in or getting additional information, and then they had to wait some more time before their name was called again to be served.
3. During all this commotion, one guy walked in to ask for a unique thing, probably a special stool kit, and he kept referring to it with a specific name. The front desk ladies were utterly stumped by his request. They asked him for the paperwork, but he didn’t have any. He was confident he was asking for the right thing and had traveled about 1.5 hr. to get that from this location. The front desk ladies called the technicians working in the back, who were actually performing the blood draws. One of the ladies went to their inventory and potentially found what this person was talking about after 10/15 minutes of drama and entertainment at the location. Even after the guy didn’t have any paperwork, and with all the chaos going on, the staff still helped him!

While all this was happening, we noticed that a couple of people who had arrived after us got called up. We had been waiting for over 45 minutes, so I got up and went to the window to talk to the front desk lady and explain the situation. She asked for my name and tried to pull up my record. Obviously, it hadn’t “made it” across from the kiosk, so she had to enter the details manually. Again, this took some time, and she kept saying sorry for the slow computer while her colleague checked Meghana in at her station.

Finally, Meghana was called in, and I was called back a few minutes later. While I was sitting on the chair, ready with my sleeve up my arm, this technician apologized for the slow systems. I asked her

We had a chuckle. The technician confirmed my name and DOB, and I noticed.
She tried to pull my record, and even the Search was horribly slow. She kept going back and forth to different pages and couldn’t find me! She excused herself and went to talk to the front desk ladies, then she returned after a few minutes and was able to find me, print the required details, and proceed with the task. While completing the blood draw, she described they’d been having these issues for quite a while and hadn’t had any help or upgrade to the systems. The back and forth between the check-in folks and technicians was their own manual system of keeping track of which patients were served and which had just checked in and were next.

They were productive despite the system they were working with, not because of it.

Once we understood what was happening, we felt so bad for the staff and suddenly felt so much gratitude towards them! We thanked them for their patience and cooperation and wished their day would improve.

If I look at this whole situation from an IT person’s perspective, I think of:

What could have been better?

• Why can’t this staff get proper working hardware?
•  Who manages these locations, networks, and hardware?
•  Why can’t someone do better at project/program/location management and have proper information about what products these facilities have? Have an adequate inventory?
•  Why isn’t there a HELPLINE at this place where some IT department supports the staff to help fix their issues?
•  Why has someone yet to think of any risk management plan? If something goes wrong with the systems, how would they continue operating?
•  And so much more!

What we really appreciated

In all this, the staff were very kind and apologetic to their patients. They’ve had their share of challenges in their personal lives, but they didn’t raise their voice or lose patience with anyone coming in for the service.

Call To Action

This is just one experience that I felt needed to be jotted down and shared:

• How many such front-line workers have to face such situations every day?
•  Isn’t software, technology, and disciplines like project/program and vendor management to ASSIST folks and make their lives easier?
•  Why are we failing colossally at this?
•  What actions are we taking as individuals and as a society to fix this and help them help us?