Implementation of Epic Beaker Anatomic Pathology at an Academic Medical Center.

Background: Beaker is a relatively new laboratory information system (LIS) offered by Epic Systems Corporation as part of its suite of health-care software and bundled with its electronic medical record, EpicCare. It is divided into two modules, Beaker anatomic pathology (Beaker AP) and Beaker Clinical Pathology. In this report, we describe our experience implementing Beaker AP version 2014 at an academic medical center with a go-live date of October 2015.

Low-cost workflow improvement reduces gastrointestinal block use 17% by altering classic histotechnology testing.

Objectives: Gastrointestinal (GI) biopsy specimens were previously limited to four per cassette to facilitate established internal technical work practices and histotechnology best practice guidelines. We evaluated the workflow of these biopsy specimens.

Methods: We implemented three specific changes: (1) up to 10 GI biopsy specimens could be placed in each cassette, (2) histotechnologists would no longer orient GI biopsy specimens, and (3) embedding would be in a straight line rather than diagonal.