Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center and Laboratory Sciences of Arizona have received international recognition for their innovative work during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve lab result times.

Banner Del E. Webb and LSA received The 2021 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Award Top Global Winner award, one of three given out internationally every year. The UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence awards program was created by health care organizations from around the world to recognize exceptional projects that highlight innovative problem solving and the novel use of laboratory science.

“Banner is an organization that has courageous innovation as a core value and this award epitomizes that value,’’ Marjorie Bessel, MD, chief clinical officer for Banner Health said. “We are proud of our team for developing such a unique and highly scalable solution.’’

“Our laboratory team collaborated with their peers, kept patient care the priority, and thought innovatively to find a solution that improved turnaround time, patient care, and communication. Thank you to the clinical laboratory, nurses, physicians, quality team, and clinical care operations for making this process a success,”  Meghan Shapiro, chief operating officer, Hospital Laboratory Operations, LSA said.

The team comprised of Del Webb and LSA members recognized that improving lab-result times could help improve patients’ diagnoses, ongoing care and discharge times. To improve times, the multidisciplinary team employed a variety of process-improvement techniques including Six Sigma, Scrum, Kanban, Lean and Design Thinking, to analyze the situation and come up with solutions.

UNIVANTS international judges, representing leading specialist societies, institutions and associations from various medical disciplines, reviewed hundreds of applications. The Webb/LSA proposal was praised for its uniqueness and its potential to be used widely in other applications.

As part of the award, Banner Del E. Webb and LSA team members have been invited to attend a roundtable discussion with other award winners that will take place in Seoul, South Korea this summer.