Services provided by Pathology and Laboratory Medicine impact 80% of all patients. It is the branch of medicine that receives and analyses specimens collected from patients. Specimens can be blood, urine, tissues and many other types depending on what the specimen is collected for.
A network of community collection sites and acute care phlebotomy teams support access to these services. The laboratory is fully integrated and offers standardized testing to support patient/client needs as they move through the continuum of care, programs and services.
Health practitioners may order a test for many different reasons including:
to diagnose a disease, to rule out a disease, to monitor response to treatments
and often to check that many of our organ systems are functioning properly. The
results of the laboratory test are critically important to health care providers
as it impacts the types of treatments that may be used if a patient requires
treatment.
In a patient critically ill, laboratory testing is necessary to monitor
improvements in their conditions and often such tests need to be done in
minutes. For otherwise healthy patients, tests are less urgent but important for
detecting diseases that are more common as we age. Laboratory medicine is vital
and critical to patient care and all results - positive or negative - help
health care practitioners decide on necessary treatments where appropriate.
