Lab Week originated in 1975 by the American Society for Medical Technology (ASMT), now known as the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS). This year, Medical Laboratory Professionals Week is celebrated April 20–26. This week celebrates the laboratory team, and its impact behind diagnostic medicine. ASMT developed this special week to increase visibility of the laboratory profession, foster pride among laboratory professionals, and inspire future laboratory professionals. Now, ASCLS is one of 18 laboratory medicine organizations responsible for coordinating this celebration of your profession.
To coincide with this celebration, MLO publishes its annual Lab of the Year award. This is my favorite issue of the year, and I feel privileged to read through all the amazing applications that come in for the award. Thank you so much to all the labs that submitted thoughtful nominations, and thank you to the judges for their time reviewing and scoring the labs in five categories: customer service, education and training, productivity, teamwork, and strategic outlook.
This year’s Lab of the Year is the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic Florida. As you can see from the cover photo, this is a large laboratory — 434 full-time equivalent staff. The DLMP serves the 304-bed Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Florida hospital. Patients throughout the world look to the Mayo Clinic for life-saving diagnosis and treatment. And without a doubt, if patients were aware of all the work happening in the DLMP, they would be as impressed as we are. In addition to the laboratory’s strong commitment to its patients, the laboratory team is committed to each other, and it is committed to the education of future laboratorians. In the past year, the lab has done much to improve its productivity including installing overhead cameras in Anatomic Pathology that have significantly reduced the time spent looking for missing specimens by 70%; investing in mass spectrometry has improved the speed of microbial identification so patients are receiving results much faster, often within a few hours; and implementing a new enterprise document control system that has increased efficiency by 25%, allowing lab staff to focus more on critical tasks and less on administrative duties.
The two runners-up for the Lab of the Year award are Mohawk Valley Health System Laboratory in Utica, New York and NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. The Mohawk Valley Health System Laboratory is very dedicated to its patients. It has its own dedicated team of Client Services Representatives who provide service and support to patients, on-staff providers, local and regional healthcare providers, hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation facilities. The Client Services office is staffed Monday – Friday from 5:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 7:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. The health system recently merged two busy hospitals and laboratories into one very busy hospital and laboratory. This entailed the merging of differing laboratory processes into one more efficient process flow.
NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine has a robust education program for its staff. The newly launched Leadership Development Program has the aim of enhancing the skills of current leaders, developing the next generation, and lowering employee turnover. The lab also launched the Hematology Academy to future-proof its lab by empowering the team with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to lead. There are three tiers of leadership in the Academy to cultivate leaders at every level.
So many wonderful nominations came in, and it is not an easy task choosing just three to highlight. I hope you enjoy learning about three of your peers. Thank you for all you do, and Happy Medical Laboratory Professionals Week!
I welcome your comments and questions — please send them to me at [email protected].
