Anna Carpenter, Operations Manager at Regional Pathology Services, recently was honored with the Silver U Award. The award recognizes non-faculty UNMC employees who consistently exceed expectations or achieve special accomplishments, highlighting their contributions to the university’s mission.
Carpenter was nominated for the Silver U Award by Theresa Faure, interim RPS director. In her nomination letter, Faure said Carpenter played a critical leadership role in the deployment of Beaker, Nebraska Medicine’s new laboratory information system. Faure said Carpenter also found an innovative solution to improve the reliability and traceability of specimen transport: integrating Apple AirTags into courier satchels. The simple, cost-effective move improved chain-of-custody accountability and reduced the risk of lost specimens.
“It reflects Anna’s ability to think outside the box and implement practical innovations that directly enhance patient care,” Faure said.
Carpenter said the award was a big surprise. “I never even had it in my mind that I would be nominated for that,” she said. “To be nominated by your peers and co-workers, it’s really a big honor to me.”
Carpenter, who grew up in Creighton, Nebraska, earned her BS in biology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and started working for Nebraska Medicine in the lab in 2009, in phlebotomy and specimen receiving. In 2015, she joined RPS as a client service representative. By 2019 she was an Assistant Manager, obtained her master’s degree and three years later became Operations Manager. She and two assistant managers supervise more than 50 people in operations, roughly half of RPS’s total of 102 employees. In addition to their staff here, they have employees at two other locations in Omaha, as well as in Lincoln, Grand Island and Kearney.
Carpenter said the Beaker LIS project was a major undertaking. “I was glad to be a part of it and be as involved as I was. We work with labs every day, but with this we were able to collaborate on a different level. It wasn’t just via this specimen or that specimen; it was more what is the process in your lab? OK, this is ours—how can we make them more efficient for both of us with Beaker?” She said efforts to work out problems that have popped up since going live with Beaker in June have kept them all busy. “We haven’t gotten to the optimization of it yet, but the newer, updated system will be better for the organization in the long run. And we’ll get there. It’s taking some time, but we’ll get there.”
Carpenter said the air tagging of satchels was a solution to a problem that arose on the busy route that goes down the Interstate 80 corridor, to Grand Island, Kearney, North Platte and back. After a satchel with specimens from one of their top clients went missing, RPS leaders met to discuss solutions. “We said how about air tags? Those are like 20 bucks. My assistant manager, Katherine Harbols, helped me implement it and put them on all the satchels. So we can track that specific satchel on an iPad. We’ve had zero missing satchels since.”