The only contact most patients at CarolinaEast Medical Center have with hospital laboratory staff is when phlebotomists stop by their rooms to draw blood for testing.
The lab’s 65 employees, including two pathologists, perform more than 1.5 million tests per year in the areas of chemistry, hematology, microbiology, molecular PCR, transfusion services, cytology, histology, and anatomic pathology.
“Each one of those areas is a specialized area, so we do different testing in those departments depending on what type of specimen we receive,” said Jennifer Lewis, laboratory director. “So, we can do anything from diagnosing cancer to telling someone they have high cholesterol to blood typing.”