Lab Services Support Physicians and Patients
Chris Hall, Fort Sanders Regional laboratory manager, places tubes in a Synchron LX20, a machine which does blood chemistry testing.
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 o correctly diagnose and treat patients doctors rely on information from many sources. One of the most important sources is the medical laboratory, which provides a wide range of services from comprehensive blood profiles to tests for specific diseases.
 "We work behind the scenes, so people are not always aware of the sophisticated equipment and procedures we use to help doctors treat their patients," said Chris Hall, laboratory manager at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center.
The Fort Sanders lab is part of Covenant Health Laboratory Services, which supports Covenant's East Tennessee acute care hospitals (Fort Sanders Regional, Parkwest, Sevier, and Loudon Medical Centers and Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge). Covenant Health Laboratory Services also operates outreach labs at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and at Fort Sanders West, and provides laboratory services to several area physician offices and nursing homes.
Hall said common tests for patients include:
- CBC, or complete blood count, which tests components such as red cells, white cells, and platelets. "The profile is very comprehensive," he said. "We can learn about 50 different elements of information from a CBC, including whether infection or anemia exists."
- A basic chemistry panel checks factors such as electrolytes, glucose, sodium, potassium and chloride.
- A thyroid panel screens for hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidsim.
- A urinalysis checks for urinary tract infections and measures sugar levels in the urine.
The labs also do cardiac testing and cancer screenings or may test for any number of diseases including summertime afflictions such as Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Covenant Health's Laboratory Services are committed to serving both patients and physicians, said Wendy Keebler, outreach laboratory service representative.
"Our hospital-based sites provide 24-hour services, and they allow us to test more efficiently. For instance, all of our hepatitis B lab work goes to Methodist Medical Center. The technologists there have specific expertise with hepatitis B, plus the higher concentration of test volumes at one site means we can keep our costs lower," she said.
"The outreach labs bring our services to the community, so a patient who needs lab work can simply walk in with their physician's order and be done in a very short time."
Hall added that today's techniques for drawing blood minimize a patient's discomfort, making the process as painless as possible.
In addition to collecting samples and reporting results, Covenant Health Laboratory Services can provide physician offices with up-to-date equipment and laboratory supplies, phlebotomy training, and information about documentation and billing regulations.
Keebler said quality is critical to laboratory services. "We have our own internal quality checking which goes on constantly, plus our laboratories are one of the most frequently inspected services by outside regulatory agencies." The labs are state licensed and nationally certified.
For laboratory analysis which cannot be done locally, Covenant Health has an arrangement with a national reference lab, Mayo Medical Labs of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
For more information about Covenant Health Laboratory Services, contact Wendy Keebler at 541-2940.
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