Cost Analysis of the Automated Examination of Urine with the Sysmex UN-Series™ in a Spanish Population

Background Current practice for urinalysis mainly entails different manual or semi-automated procedures that generate substantial financial costs, as well as a high and time-consuming workload for laboratory personnel. Objective The aim of this study was to assess whether the availability of integrated and fully automated urinalysis systems such as the UN-Series™ from Sysmex could resolve such concerns. Methods The target population was established based on 92,459 urine samples, which is the total average number of urine samples collected in the clinical and microbiology laboratory department of La Mancha Centro Hospital over a 10-year period (2008–2018). Financial data were retrieved from the eSalud database. Reference and test scenarios were defined based on clinical features found in reports from public websites. The cost and savings analyses were based on total costs over a 1-year time frame for the reference and test scenarios. The total average annual time savings for laboratory personnel were also calculated. Results The comparison of annual costs for current practice versus the automated examination of urine samples found average cost savings of €340,003 per year. Assessment of body fluids using the automated analysis system would provide average annual savings of €1063. The use of the UN-Series™ would save 1615 h annually for laboratory personnel. Conclusion Implementing the UN-Series™ for the automated analysis of urine samples within routine practice in clinical laboratories could minimise costs, provide substantial savings for investment and improve laboratory procedures. Furthermore, the UN-Series™ could contribute to synergy between clinical analysis and microbiology laboratories in Spain.