Efficiency to quickly deploy and operationalize retail clinical sites

Quest Diagnostics manages >200,000 encounters per day across 2,200 independent sites.  Over 500 of the sites are dedicated retail sites.

To increase access and convenience, Quest Diagnostics wanted to increase their retail operations to attract more patients and reduce their installation expenses for rapid growth and conversion of sites.

I led a three-prong strategy to include the following elements:
1.  To reduce investments and risk, two national partners (Walmart & Albertsons) were identified to place Quest Diagnostics PSCs into the stores.  This reduced our set up and implementation costs as allowed for higher levels of agility moving into and out of key markets.
Using geo-mapping and density studies of the national patient population, optimal stores were identified.  Using a "PSC-in-a-Box" strategy, Quest was able to stand up retail locations in just two weeks.

2.  Further emphasis was given to throughput analysis leveraging lean to optimize the process fueled by human-centered design processes.  These efforts were further reinforced through rebranding of the sites. (See "Human-Centered Design" solution).

3.  With outcomes from the human-design sessions, we implemented a digital strategy to separate the transaction from the interaction to allow the phlebotomists to provide higher empathy and to focus on the interaction with the patient.  The patient was able to complete all transactional features of the appointment (all administrative requirements) online and to check in digitally through kiosks at the patient service center.  This also led to further reduction in costs by moving the patient center to a "paperless" environment.

Quest Diagnostics was able to grow their retail footprint to more than 37% of total sites with 3.3M square feet of retail.  The new strategy led to more profitably, reduced operating costs and improved patient satisfaction scores.