Management of a point-of-care program. Organization, quality assurance, and data management.

Management of a POCT program can be difficult. Cooperation and communication are essential. Creating an interdisciplinary POCT committee is key to successful management. Each discipline through its expertise and common goal to provide quality patient care contributes to the success of the program. The development of a comprehensive QA program ensures that POCT results are accurate, reliable, and performed by competent personnel, and that regulatory compliance is achieved. Continuous quality improvement diminishes the POCT program's potential for undesirable outcomes. Ultimately, the patient benefits, with quality patient care and improved outcomes. Improved data management is necessary with the increased demands for point-of-care tests and the volume of data already generated to ensure quality of results and still meet regulatory guidelines. More automated systems are needed to eliminate labor- and time-intensive tasks. The function of downloading data requires complete automation and transparency for nursing and other testing personnel to gain complete cooperation. The future for data management, however, looks promising for meeting the needs of today.