Tag Archives: Laboratory staffing (see Staffing)

November 2021—Cybersecurity and the cloud, COVID care gaps, and lab consolidation were among the topics CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle talked to LIS vendors and Toby Cornish, MD, PhD, about in a Sept. 20 virtual roundtable. A return to on-site trade shows, too, came up: “I do miss walking the vendor floor. I feel like I’m out of touch with what the developments are,” said Dr. Cornish of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

October 2021—Surge, supplies, staffing. Eighteen months into the pandemic, the story remains similar. Even where laboratory salaries have been bumped up or sign-on bonuses have been in place to strengthen the workforce, Compass Group members report little to no success. And on supplies: “Every week we cross our fingers and toes to see what arrives in the door, how to disperse that through the systems, and how to continually educate the physicians on appropriate use of that limited resource,” says Judy Lyzak, MD, MBA, of Alverno Laboratories. She and other laboratory leaders of the Compass Group met virtually Sept. 6 to share their latest. Of the confluence of problems laboratories face, one said: “I have never seen anything quite like this.”

April 2019—The tight supply of technologists to fill open positions is pushing laboratories to be creative in finding answers. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and TriCore Reference Laboratories found their answers by looking not just outward but also—and largely—inward.

December 2017—After two rounds of a new program to train high schoolers in phlebotomy, OhioHealth is seeing the fruits of its efforts. It has hired 19 of its trainees and a third course, set to begin next month, has 20 high school seniors enrolled. Just when OhioHealth’s phlebotomy staffing needs were expanding, laboratory services leaders were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the training students were receiving at most of the phlebotomy programs in the Columbus area.