Clinical Laboratory Operations: Test Volumes, Cost per Test, Batch Runs, Instrument Capacity, Turnaround Times & Send-Out Decisions

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Summarise two days of a fictional lab's sample reception log by department and weekday with COUNTIFS and SUMIFS, count the samples per hour and find the peak hour and how far it rises above the average hour.
• Count every test a fictional analyser really performs, including repeats, quality-control runs and calibrations, and spread reagent, control, calibrator, labour and instrument costs over the patient results to get the true cost per reportable result.
• Compare one to six runs per day for a fictional low-volume assay: control tests, cost per day and per result, and the average waiting time, then pick the cheapest schedule that still meets the wait target.
• Compare a fictional analyser's hourly demand with its usable throughput, measure the utilisation per hour and at the peak, count the hours above an alert level and use ROUNDUP to see how many analysers next year's peak needs.
• Turn receipt and release times of urgent and routine samples into turnaround minutes, measure median and p90 with PERCENTILE.INC against fictional service targets, count the late share and report a status per priority.
• Turn test volumes per shift into hands-on workload minutes with SUMPRODUCT, convert them into staff with ROUNDUP and a minimum rule, price the shifts with premiums and compare the staff cost per test of day and night.
• Compare a fictional assay run in-house with sending it to a reference lab: cost per test on both sides, the break-even volume and a volume table in which IF names the cheaper option.
• Calculate the margin of every test on a fictional lab's menu, rank the tests by total margin, measure the margin % of the whole menu, flag the loss makers and chart the margins.