Improving lab efficiency through data: Lessons from Argentina

• Analytical tools helped LACE Laboratories identify bottlenecks and optimize test validation and turnaround times
• Increased autovalidation significantly reduced manual workload, overtime, and result delays in high-volume tests
• Data-driven insights enabled smarter staff scheduling without hiring new personnel, improving lab efficiency

Clinical labs today face growing pressure to deliver results faster, especially now that test volumes and disease complexity continue to increase. With diagnostic testing supporting a large share of medical decision-making, delays in results can quickly affect patient care, physician confidence, and healthcare system efficiency. Furthermore, from a business perspective, the laboratory's quality assurance and traceability of results, coupled with reduced turnaround times and optimized staff capacity, are process assets that make a real difference to the business.

​These pressures are further magnified in large, distributed laboratory networks. Millions of tests move through pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical stages and often across multiple locations. When laboratories rely on manual sample tracking or disconnected systems, delays or errors can be impossible to trace as samples travel through these stages. In those situations, teams fall back on subjective experiences to fix problems rather than working from objective operational evidence, leading to significant inefficiencies.

LACE Laboratories in Córdoba, Argentina offers a clear example of how data-based analytical tools can provide greater visibility into lab testing processes. With over 4.6 million tests analyzed annually across a central laboratory and more than 35 sites, including sample collection centers, satellite laboratories and hospital-based labs, the organization recognized the need for a clearer view of workflow performance. Through systematically tracking turnaround time, validation activity, and testing volumes using an analytical platform, LACE identified problems and trends then took targeted action that helped dramatically improve operational efficiencies. 

In many clinical laboratories, turnaround time challenges are not caused by a single failure point but by a lack of end-to-end visibility within their workflows. Traditional lab workflows often rely on manual handoff of patient samples, siloed systems, and retrospective reporting. As a result, data can be scattered across instruments, spreadsheets, and information systems that do not easily connect with one another. While labs may be aware that turnaround times are slipping, they lack the insight to understand precisely where or why it happens.

This visibility gap matters at scale. Laboratories process an estimated 14 billion tests each year, and roughly 70 percent of medical decisions depend on these test results.¹ This underscores the importance of lab performance to the healthcare system and the potential for small inefficiencies to ripple across clinical care.

Issues can arise at any stage of sample processing. In the pre-analytical phase, samples can arrive late, be mislabeled, or require follow-up before analysis can begin. During the analytical phase, bottlenecks form when workloads increase, instruments go offline, or urgent tests are not clearly distinguished from routine work. At the post-analytical phase, results can sit in queues waiting for manual checks or handoffs between disconnected systems. Without a clear, shared view of performance across the entire workflow, laboratories end up operating in response mode when problems occur. These bottlenecks are, therefore, addressed only after they trigger complaints. Even then, improvement efforts tend to be local, temporary, and difficult to scale.

Research shows that slow laboratory results can extend emergency department stays by 61 percent and delay treatment by 43 percent, leading to longer waits and tougher decisions for clinicians, as well as uncertainty and added stress for patients.² Overall, the wasted resources and labor costs due to these inefficiencies result in a loss of brand value for the company, in addition to the financial burden on the company and the entire health system.

At LACE Laboratories, decisions on test autovalidation, analytical platform changes, and personnel optimization were traditionally based on experience and accepted practice rather than objective analysis. However, this conventional approach meant that operations were not optimized for the millions of tests that needed to be performed, leading to significant lab inefficiencies.

Like many organizations, LACE operated within the constraints of a traditional laboratory model, where manual steps are common and systems are rarely interconnected. Tracking relied on a mix of digital and paper-based processes, even where automation was in place. Data lived in multiple systems, limiting interoperability and making it difficult to use information consistently for decision-making. Traceability was a recurring concern. 

For LACE, it became clear that the management, tracking, validation, and interpretation of their workflow could be better supported through the use of digital analytical solutions. So the team shifted focus and closely evaluated how work moved through the lab using a comprehensive web-based analytical tool. Looking objectively at turnaround time together with validation behavior and hourly volume changed how the lab understood its workflow. Pressure points became easier to identify, giving the team a concrete basis for adjusting processes and staff coverage.

As a result, optimization took shape in LACE’s endocrinology, hepatitis C (HCV), and preconception testing, and within the working hours for the virology department staff.

Using the comprehensive web-based analytical tool, the impact for LACE was measurable. For two of the largest-volume tests (thyroid-stimulating hormone and free thyroxine), automatic validation increased from 17.1% to 83.9% and from 17.0% to 74.5%, respectively. This meant less personnel workload and overtime, plus faster delivery of results to patients and physicians, enhancing operational capacity and patient satisfaction.

Anti-HCV antibody testing showed some of the clearest improvements, with turnaround time reduced by 178 minutes. Turnaround time for preconception tests (hepatitis B, HIV, syphilis, Chagas, toxoplasmosis, and brucellosis) also dramatically decreased by 58 minutes. Lastly, LACE used the analytical platform to improve active working hours for the virology department staff, helping improve workload and sample processing without hiring new staff and overtime pay.

Overall, these data-driven insights improved both speed and consistency that helped reduce delays caused by manual intervention and uneven workload distribution.

Lab leaders need to improve turnaround times of results for patients and clinicians, especially as the number of tests and workload for personnel exponentially increases. This starts with visibility into workflows.

Comprehensive analytical tools that bring operational data into one place allows teams to review performance at all phases of the testing process. A practical first step is to use these analytical solutions to focus on a few high-volume or clinically sensitive areas and use data to understand where delays form and why.

By first identifying those bottlenecks, labs can then act on those insights and make substantial changes to validation practices, staffing patterns, and workflow sequences that are guided by objective evidence rather than subjective assumptions. Strong data governance, clearly defined clinical validation rules, and continuous oversight by laboratory professionals are essential to ensure that digital optimization enhances efficiency without compromising analytical quality, clinical interpretation, or patient safety. Over time, this approach builds consistency across teams and improves the usage of resources, giving laboratories a clearer path to adapt as demand grows or conditions change.