Keeping up with technology

The lab is subject to periodic reviews by the College of American Pathologists.
Medical technologists used to sit at a microscope, peering through its lenses at laboriously prepared slides. They once held test tubes up to the light, tipping them back and forth and timing the appearance of a blood clot by their wristwatches.
"It was only in the 1940s," Connie Parks, Biomedical Laboraties owner and medical technician, explains, "that blood types were identified. We did everything by hand in the '60s, but in the last 50 years we've come to almost total automation. Very few blood samples are processed by hand."
Because Biomedical Laboratories depends so heavily on technology, one of their busiest employees is Kristen Zocco, who had to think for a moment before describing herself as an information systems manager.
As a daughter of the owner, Zocco literally grew up in the lab, spending her after-school hours in a playroom there while her mother worked. After earning a degree in industrial administration, she realized she could put it to work in her mother's business. One of her early successes was saving the company $12,000 by designing its bar code system herself.
Her current project is interfacing the cytology department, located across the street, into the main computer system.
Standards to meet
Maintenance of the lab's computerized equipment doesn't depend on Zocco alone. There is a complex network of daily testing, service agreements and outside review. The College of American Pathologists (CAP), which Parks calls "the gold standard" for lab testing, sends the lab unknown samples three times a year for testing.
"We run them," medical technologist Denise Naughton says, "and send in our answers, which are compared with the answers for about 2,000 other labs across the country. Every other year, a team comes in from another lab to inspect us, and we inspect a lab in return. We meet a certain standard to remain a member.
"The CAP isn't there to boot out a lab if it doesn't meet their standards, but to bring that lab's standards up to theirs." The lab also holds a license from the government allowing it to perform different levels of testing.
Though continuing education isn't required for medical technologists, employees at Biomedical Laboratories participate in audio training conferences several times a year.
Staff
There are a pathologist and a cytopathologist on staff at the lab, and about 40 employees in three locations. Couriers and phlebotomy teams are out in the community every day. They serve nursing homes, physicians' offices, home care agencies, veterinarians (including Parks' husband, Dr. Troy Parks), and area facilities for the mentally challenged.
Most medical laboratories, Parks says, are in hospitals or are nationwide. Small private labs like Biomedical are a rarity. Parks feels good about serving the local community.
"To me," she says, "the most exciting thing about this business is that our organization truly cares about our patients. We feel just as important in the background, even though we're not right there at the bedside. We're proud of what we do to help the patient."