How to Boost COVID Testing Capacity, Save on Resources, and Keep the Experience Stress-Free for the Patient

During the course of this global pandemic, we’ve heard a lot about heroes, essential workers on the front lines of the battle to defeat COVID-19.

Lynn Pittsinger of the Whatcom County Health Department is one of those heroes. She continues to work tirelessly to keep her community safe while serving as a Supervisor for her health department’s COVID-19 testing site in Lynden, Washington. 

The Whatcom County testing site is making headlines because, as Lynn told me in a recent interview, “it’s mathematically perfect.” 

Lynn was referring to the fact that this testing site, which is set-up to collect four patient samples every three minutes with a capacity for 500 tests every six-hour shift, is so efficient that patients rarely even have to wait in line. 

It’s been that way since August.

Here’s a clip of my interview with Lynn where she describes the early days of testing and how things changed soon after the Whatcom County Council approved her recommendation to add the TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Portal to the county’s collection, processing, and reporting workflow.

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To learn more about this successful testing site and how other government agencies can follow the Whatcom County example, I invite you to click on the link below. 

A Testing Site With No Lines - Learn How the Whatcom County Health Department Became a Model for Others to Follow