News

Hospital Laboratory Renovates and Expands to Meet Community Needs

04/20/04

Beebe Medical Center recognizes National Medical Laboratory Week, April 19-24, 2004, to celebrate the contributions of its 80 laboratory professionals who perform and process more than 600,000 laboratory tests throughout the community as a key element of patient care, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Beebe Medical Center’s laboratory processes more than 400,000 specimens each year from its community laboratory/outpatient services sites at the Beebe Health Campus on Route 24, Beebe Lab Express at Five Points, Long Neck, Millville and the Emergency Department on Savannah Road. The Medical Center processes over 200,000 inpatient tests each year. The theme this year for National Medical Laboratory Week is “Laboratory Professionals, Working with You for Better Health.”

“Laboratory medicine provides a crucial thread that runs through the entire patient care process,” explains Jeffrey M. Fried, Beebe Medical Center president. “National Medical Laboratory Week provides an opportunity to honor the contributions of pathologists, laboratory technologists and technicians, and all of our laboratory team members to our mission of maintaining wellness, diagnosing illness, treating disease and restoring the health of our community.”

Earlier this year, Beebe Medical Center welcomed its team of highly specialized and experienced pathologists, Allied Pathology Associates: Dr. Richard Palmer the Director of Pathology, Dr. Suchetha Adiga and Dr Yongling Bian. Additionally, to continue to meet the growing healthcare needs of our community, the laboratory at Beebe Medical Center is undergoing extensive renovation to increase its size by 4,000 square feet. The project, which is expected to be completed at the end of this year, will expand the lab area, enabling greater clinical work space, additional instruments and refrigerator/freezer capacity, and offering the potential for future capabilities like genetic testing and expanded blood banking.

“We are proud of the work we do and strive to provide the utmost in accurate, dependable answers for physicians and our patients,” explains Malcolm Hancock, director of Beebe Medical Center’s laboratory services. “Test results from the laboratory drive a significant portion of clinical decisions, from diagnosis to therapy, and we support physicians to identify the presence of disease in its earliest stages, when the possibilities of a cure are greatest.”

Beebe Medical Center’s laboratory holds accreditation by the Commission on Laboratory Accreditation of the College of American Pathologists (CAP), which is recognized by the federal government as being equal to or more stringent than the government's own inspection program.

Medical laboratory professionals include pathologists, medical technologists, medical laboratory technicians, histotechnologists, cytotechnologists and phlebotomy technicians. Among the departments that make up the medical laboratory are chemistry, hematology, cytology, microbiology, immunology, coagulation, histology, urinalysis, and the blood bank.