Pathology / Laboratory
The Pathology Department is among the hospital’s most important, providing clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology diagnostic and therapeutic services to thousands of patients annually and timely reporting of findings to hundreds of referring physicians.
Services are provided to inpatients, outpatients and those whose specimens are referred to Saint John’s Health Center by physician offices, home health agencies, and other outpatient clinics.
A broad range of patients is served by the department, including Medical/Surgical, Oncology, Ob/Gyn, Neonatal and Critical Care. Outpatients range from Emergency Department visitors to well patients receiving annual physical exams and disease screening. As a convenience, specimen collection is offered at medical office buildings and at the Outpatient Lab within Saint John’s.
The Pathology Department provides testing in numerous specialties and subspecialties. These include Hematology, Coagulation, Special Coagulation, Flowcytometry, Clinical Chemistry, Urinalysis, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, Bacteriology, Mycobacteriology, Mycology, Parasitology, Immunology, Radioimmunoassay, Transfusion Medicine/Blood Bank, Blood Donor Collection, Surgical Pathology, Cytopathology and Immunohistochemistry. This significant depth of diagnostic and therapeutic services is designed to meet the needs of all patients requiring services at Saint John’s Health Center. In most cases, immediate testing is available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, and the department oversees all point-of-care testing performed by various patient treatment areas.
Prior to testing, pertinent clinical information is requested in order to ensure the accuracy of test results; where appropriate, pathologists provide consultation regarding the clinical necessity of laboratory testing. The testing needs of patients are promptly attended to and prioritized based upon urgency.
Most laboratory test results are available within hours, and turnaround times for common tests are even shorter—often 30 minutes to one hour. Certain specialty or low-volume tests are referred to other accredited laboratories, and pathologists decide which labs should be used based upon their ability to provide the best clinical information and turnaround time as well as cost effectiveness.
The department is always open, and a pathologist is on call at all hours to meet the surgical pathology and clinical consultation needs of physicians and Laboratory staff. In addition to pathologists, the department is staffed by clinical laboratory scientists, cytotechnologists, histotechnologists, laboratory technicians, assistants, transcriptionists, and others. A minimum of three people are on site at night to provide urgent testing for inpatients and Emergency Department patients.
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