Medical Laboratory Scientists (ASCP)

I've been having trouble figuring this one out. Over the last 30 years that I've been in health care, we've been through fee for service, diagnosis related groups, and CPT codes with insurance constraints. Each time seems to get a little worse for the lab. Yet overall, the laboratory is still a money making endeavor for the health care industry.

If Obama's plan is adopted, we may see more quantity orders as more people will be covered for health care. I can't see that as a bad thing. I'm sure that payments/reimbursement may decrease per test, but we will be doing more tests. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Medical Laboratory Scientists are the invisible profession. Most labs are tucked away in a basement or in somewindoless corner of a medical center. Yet we are one of the most used departments of a health care team.

Techs generally like to stay in their cubby holes and never interact with anything other than machines, test tubes, and specimens. This is probably the main reason we are relegated to the netherworld of health care careers. We really need to get out more and promote ourselves and what we do.

When drawing blood from e.r. patients, one never knows what will happen. I once had to get blood from a patient who had a dildo stuck in his rear end and it was still vibrating!  I could hear the humming and had to fight hard to keep from laughing!

Once I saw a patient sitting on the floor in the e.r. and his nose was bitten off, but he was laughing! Turned out that a girl he had been trying to date bit it off when he got into a fight with her boyfriend!  He was pretty drunk too which didn't help the situation and may have been why he found it so funny. Bet he wasn't laughing the next day, LOL!