Annals of clinical biochemistry
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Ann. Clin. Biochem. · Mar 2009
The rise and fall of C-reactive protein: managing demand within clinical biochemistry.
Managing workload within the laboratory has become a key role for clinical biochemists. National benchmarking data highlighted a 31% increase in C-reactive protein (CRP) requests between 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 for the University Hospital of North Staffordshire (UHNS). The aim of this study was to examine CRP requesting patterns within the acute admissions units. ⋯ This study has demonstrated that strategies to control demand at the requesting stage have been able to reduce the number of requests from acute admission units. This study forms the basis for ongoing work on inappropriate requesting and illustrates that the introduction of agreed protocols in acute settings can be used as a demand-management tool.