Blue Mountain Hospital: Laboratory.

Blue Mountain Hospital Laboratory

The Blue Mountain Hospital Laboratory services outpatient, emergency room, and in-house patients. We receive patients and specimens from the physicians' clinics, the district nursing home, local resident care facilities, and Home Health/Hospice. The lab is CLIA certified, participates in American Association of Bioanalysts Proficiency testing, and is staffed by three full time Medical Technologists (American Society of Clinical Pathologists certified), two casual Medical Laboratory Technicians (also certified by ASCP), and a full-time phlebotomist. We perform a wide variety of testing in chemistry, hematology, coagulation, cardiac monitoring, urinalysis, serology, and blood banking. We are equipped with state of the art instrumentation in each of these areas. (see the equipment list below). in 2008, the lab performed 27,500 billable tests. St. Charles Medical Center Lab is utilized as a reference lab for send-out tests, who in turn utilizes PAML for speciality testing.

The lab information system is American Health Net "Clarus", which is interfaced with all the lab equipment and connected to the hospital information system, billing, medical records, and reference lab. Patient results are available through our electronic medical records.

As of June 2009, the equipment list of the lab includes:

Dimension X-pand for chemistry tests, including the basic panels (electrolytes,
    liver enzymes, lipids, etc.), miscellaneous chemistries (Glucose, BUN, calcium,
    magnesium, phosphorus, CPKs, GGT, uric acids, medical alcohols,
    acetaminophens, salicylates, dilantins), immunochemistries (TSH, free T4,
    Digoxin, PSA), Glycohemoglobins, urine chemistries with microalbumins, and
    CSF panels.

ABX Pentra 60 C+ is our Hematology machine for complete blood counts with a
5 part automated differential.

Sysmex 550 for Protimes and PTT's with a Roche Coag-U-Chek used for most
of the out-patient INR determinations.

Dimension Stratus for troponins, CRP-hs's, quantitative HCG's, and D-dimers.

Abbot i-Stat for CKMBs and BNPs.

Manual testing includes reticulocyte counts, body fluid cell counts, wet mounts, KOH preps, urinalysis, serologies (Mono, Strep A, H. Pylori, pregnancy, ANA, RA, C. difficile, RSV, influenza and toxicology quick tests), Blood Banking (15 units of blood supplied by the American Red Cross are kept as inventory), Rhogam is also provided.

Future innovations include Microbiology Semi-automated instrument for more standardization in bacterial identification and sensitivity results.