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Review
. 2023 Oct;76(10):659-663.
doi: 10.1136/jcp-2023-209035. Epub 2023 Aug 2.

Cost analysis of archives in the pathology laboratories: from safety to management

Albino Eccher  1 , Angelo Paolo Dei Tos  2 , Aldo Scarpa  1 , Vincenzo L'Imperio  3 , Enrico Munari  4 , Giancarlo Troncone  5 , Antonio Giuseppe Naccarato  6 , Davide Seminati  3 , Fabio Pagni  7
Affiliations
Review

Cost analysis of archives in the pathology laboratories: from safety to management

Albino Eccher et al. J Clin Pathol. 2023 Oct.

Abstract

Context: Despite the reluctance to invest and the challenging estimation of necessary supporting costs, optimising the archives seems to be one of the hottest topics in the future management of the pathology laboratories. Historically, archives were only partially designed to securely store and organise tissue specimens, and tracking systems were often flawed, posing significant risks to patients' health and legal ramifications for pathologists.

Objective: The current review explores the available data from the literature on archives' management in pathology, including comprehensive business plans, structure setup, outfit, inventories, ongoing conservation and functional charges.

Data sources: Electronic searches in PubMed-MEDLINE and Embase were made to extract pertinent articles from the literature. Works about the archiving process and storage were included and analysed to extract information. Prepublication servers were ignored. Italian Institutional Regional databases for public competitive bidding processes were queried too.

Conclusions: A new emergent feeling in the pathology laboratory is growing for archives management; the digital pathology era is a great opportunity to apply innovation to tracking systems and samples preservation. The main aim is a critical evaluation of the return of investment in developing automatic and tracked archiving processes for improving not only quality, efficacy and efficiency of the labs but also patients' healthcare.

Keywords: Costs and Cost Analysis; MANAGEMENT; SAFETY.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of the current world to the ‘pro and contra’ offered by in-house or outsourced solutions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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