Abbott ID NOW testing

Yipes Cindy.
But no I did not see that during implementation (fall 2019) or since.  
Are you not seeing QC strep failures or you are only running flu reagents?

What we were plagued with and now it's off and on with both experienced and new users is the 'invalid' patient result. Costly and difficult to figure out.
Good luck with your go live!

Hello,

First questions that come to mind 1) are staff selecting positive and running positive (vice versa for negative)? 2) Invalid results show as QC failures rather than as invalid results.  I would double check that staff aren't getting dispense errors when they perform the test.

In my experience, invalid results are mostly due to 1 of a few things:  1) most often, it's a dispense error: a) staff do not let the Transfer Cartridge get the first click when aspirating buffer from the Sample Receiver to the Transfer Cartridges or b) they do not push down such that all liquid is transferred over from the Transfer Cartridge to the orange Test Base (should be about 4 clicks if performed slowly enough).
2) bloody samples
3) transferring the sample from blue to orange correctly but moving too quickly ahead of the ID NOW without allowing it to catch up.

Jill, that's interesting! I'm not challenging you but here is our experience.

We've used spare positive QC swabs (or buy a box of QC swabs) to run as patient tests for competency challenges/comp assessment. And they've worked to produce (fake) patient results.

The 'issue' I've had with folks using 'Run Test' rather than 'Run QC Test' is how the result then appears in RALS.

This has just been our experience with Covid specifically on ID NOW, we are going live with flu today. Maybe Flu will be different? I haven't tried running Pos QC as a patient, but I have an extra kit so I'll give it a go, just for personal knowledge...

Thanks for all the replies.  I think we worked through our issues stressing certain technique tips.  We had a successful go-live day.  All the  positive QC swabs will react positively if run as a patient with the exception of covid.  If you run a pos covid qc swab as a patient, you will get a negative result.  Don't worry, that is the expected result per Abbott.

Great to hear, Cindy, that your go-live went smoothly (Or if not smoothly, at least successfully!).
Good to know about the COVID testing on positive QC swabs from Jill and Cindy. I donated ID NOWs to the 4 clinical labs where techs performed covid but so far we kept out of ambulatory. Not sure how long that will last so very happy this came up here now.
Thanks.