Hagyard Equine Medical Institute Partners with Orchard Software for Specialty Equine Care

In February 2024, Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, Kentucky celebrated its 148th year dedicated to the health and well-being of horses. Their comprehensive in-house laboratory, Hagyard Laboratory, uses Orchard® Harvest™ laboratory information system (LIS) to provide rapid, quality lab results to support the doctors in providing the highest quality of equine healthcare.

Unparalleled Qualifications in the Equine Health Industry

Hagyard Equine Medical Institute employs more than 50 veterinarians with varying specialties, including internal medicine, surgery, field care, fertility, and ophthalmology. With their many talented veterinarians and dedicated staff members, no other non-university veterinary groups can match Hagyard’s qualifications within the equine healthcare industry.

Hagyard Laboratory Provides Top-Quality Results

The laboratory is staffed with certified medical technologists and medical laboratory technicians with extensive knowledge in equine hematology, chemistry, blood banking, microbiology, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Hagyard Laboratory provides timely and accurate results to their veterinarians, enabling them to make quick diagnoses and treatment plans for better quality care.

Testing is available in blood bank, chemistry, Coggins, cytology, endocrinology, hematology, microbiology, and PCR. The laboratory not only receives specimens from Hagyard veterinarians, but also from other veterinarians throughout the United States. The volume of specimens increases — up to 900 specimens a day — during breeding and foaling season for thoroughbreds from January to June. Orchard Harvest enables Hagyard Lab to manage larger volumes and deliver results in a timely manner.

Orchard Harvest provides barcoded labels for specimens to assist with interfacing the lab’s analyzers, and automated report delivery (i.e., email, fax), which minimizes clerical errors and enables quicker turnaround times. With Orchard Harvest, the lab has quick access to patient reports to provide to clients as needed.

Why Orchard Is a Perfect Fit for Hagyard

Prior to implementing Orchard Harvest in 2008, Hagyard Laboratory had outgrown their LIS and was looking for a solution that could accommodate their specific needs as a veterinary laboratory. They selected Orchard Harvest because of the many configurability options for testing and setup, ease of use, and because Orchard has many employees with a laboratory background. “Orchard having people with a medical technologist background  as impressive to us because, with that knowledge, they knew what we needed throughout the process, and that was extremely helpful to us,” said Tina Elam, MLS(ASCP), Lab Manager.

Flexibility, Integration, Rules, Data Mining, & More

Hagyard Laboratory, being equine-focused, benefits from the flexibility and configurability of Orchard’s LIS products. Their lab can configure fields within the system to conform to an animal care hospital and set up the system to manage their unique needs and workflow.

Configurability & Ease of Use Offer a Win-Win

Orchard Harvest at Hagyard Lab is configured for an animal hospital. They have fields set up specific to their needs. For example, in the configurable user-defined fields, they changed last name to patient name, first name to  arm/owner, race to species, and ethnicity to breed. “We are really pleased with our Harvest LIS. Its customization to our unique and specific needs has been so valuable to us, and I could see it being valuable to other veterinarian practices that perform nontraditional testing because you can customize it for what you need,” said Martha Brown, MLS (ASCP), Microbiology Supervisor. Compared to their previous system, Orchard Harvest offers much more  functionality while still being easy to use and learn.

Rules Make Lab Workflow Easier

Hagyard Laboratory leverages the rules-based decision support for order entry and resulting to automate processes throughout the lab. For example, because of the veterinarian-farm client relationship, many people at each farm may need copies of lab results, so Hagyard Laboratory automate their email reports through order entry rules. In addition, they employ result evaluation, result delivery, split order, and printing rules to streamline their workflow.

Embedded Help Offers Support On Demand

Help menus are easy to access and include valuable information used often by Hagyard Laboratory. They find the system updates very useful and like that they contain suggestions that are made by other Orchard customers.

Data Mining Supports QA & Research Projects

The lab often employs data mining results and order choice browsers for quality assurance projects (e.g., to identify and correct errors). As one of the largest equine hospitals, they participate in research studies, using the system’s data browsers to access and sort large amounts of data. “For our research projects—accessing information— Harvest LIS has been our most valuable tool. It allows us to efficiently mine the data we need,” Brown said.

Interfacing Allows for Rapid Result Delivery

At Hagyard Laboratory, the ability for Orchard Harvest to interface with lab analyzers automates the transfer of order information from the system to the instruments and back to the LIS for automated reporting. With this  integration in place, they can achieve rapid turnaround times that allow their veterinarians to provide timely care for their equine patients.

Support for Staffing Shortages

Having a reliable LIS is Hagyard’s greatest tool and has helped manage their workload even when they are short-staffed. During the pandemic when staffing was an issue, Orchard Harvest helped them manage through those harder times due to its efficiency.

Hagyard and Orchard Working Together

Hagyard Laboratory has been pleased with the support they receive from Orchard Software. They have experienced almost no downtime and have always quickly received a resolution to any issues. They appreciate Orchard’s consistent and relevant updates, helpful support team, and the client feature request process. With the shared goal of best patient care (for horses in their case), Hagyard Laboratory and Orchard Software plan to continue to  innovate and work together.

“Orchard Harvest LIS has been our most valuable tool; it has helped with efficiency, and we are able to mine data out of it to prevent errors. We have not outgrown the system and appreciated that Orchard keeps up to date and grows with us,” Elam said.