Leukemia diagnostics during the pandemic

In the past few months, we have all been confronted with an entirely new situation. Our patients belong to the high-risk group by definition. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and medical practices have had to be restructured and reorganize their priorities. Workflows had to be re-examined with regard to factual and time-related aspects with hygiene in mind. The goal has been to ensure continued care for patients, while at the same time protecting the employees trained for that very purpose.

For the MLL too, this has led to entirely new situations. Terms such as social distancing, compulsory masks, home office and lockdown were previously not on the list of challenges faced for providing our services.

We therefore thank all our colleagues and you, the senders, for the flexible and constructive cooperation over the past few months in the interest of our shared mission of providing the best care possible for our patients in this new situation.

Like many others, we too are modifying and reviewing our current workflows. Hence, we will be striving to achieve greater flexibility, particularly in our communication with you, the senders, and collaboration partners in the interest of our shared patients and duties. This applies above all for the continued expansion of our digital platforms, which supplement and are increasingly replacing the usual communication media such as phone, fax, and e-mail. We are working intensively on further increasing the user-friendliness and simplifying the local installation of our Order Entry Portal, which allows for the digital “order entry” and tracking of the samples. Already highly popular is the MLL Findings Portal we provide for accessing your patients’ findings in digital form around the clock (“MLL Befundportal,” all findings retroactively up till September 2017). The initial responses from more than a hundred users have been highly positive.

You will find more information on these portals and login/registration requests at www.mll.com/orderentry and www.mll.com/befundportal. We look forward to contacting you in the future to inform you in more detail about these highly effective new options for even more flexible and effective communication.

For all of you, and in particular our patients, we hope that the situation continues to stabilize in this “new normal.” Moreover, we look forward to continued collaboration. Please do not hesitate to let us know of your suggestions for improving our offerings – as soon as an idea occurs to you!

Sincerely yours,

C. Haferlach, T. Haferlach, W. Kern