CLINICAL LAB SCIENEC

CHAPTER 4: HOSPITAL AND LABORATORY ORGANIZATION 79
components of a larger medical center or health care system, and this provides for
even more complex organizational charts.
Anatomic Pathology
The clinical laboratory is usually organized under the pathologist in a department
called pathology services, for example. The anatomic section would include
anatomic pathologists, histotechnologists, and cytotechnologists, who perform
studies of surgical specimens and cellular differentiation of cancerous cell types
and their morphology. The anatomic pathology section differs from the clinical
pathology section, which would include all the departments of the medical
laboratory where body fluids and samples from the body are processed. Both the
anatomic and the clinical pathologists have a M.D. or D.O. (doctor of osteopathy)
degree; in some very large facilities, there are anatomic as well as clinical
pathologists. If there are both clinical and anatomic pathologists, the clinical
pathologist would be the chief officer of the clinical laboratory, separate from
the pathology department. In the lines of authority established under the CEO,
the chief pathologist would be found on an organizational chart at the same level
as the chief of professional services in most instances.
Clinical Pathology
In larger facilities, supervision of the clinical departments of the laboratory may
be provided by a pathologist who will often be a clinical pathologist, rather than
an anatomic pathologist. There will then likely be a laboratory manager at the top
of the laboratory organizational chart who supervises the day-to-day operations
of the laboratory. The laboratory manager may or may not be a medical laboratory
professional; some hold graduate business degrees and are concerned mainly
with the monetary flow of the laboratory and the effectiveness and economy of
providing services. In some laboratories, a chief technologist coordinates the daily
functions of the laboratory for the laboratory manager. The chief technologist
would manage department supervisors, such as the supervisor of hematology and
coagulation. The department super visors may have supervisors for each shift,
because the laboratory is most often open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Then
the technologists would be under the direction of the department supervisor and
would in turn supervise the other technologists and technician-level employees.
Departments within the Laboratory
The organization of departments within the medical laboratory is as varied
as the number of hospitals and clinics that contain clinical laboratory entities.
Sometimes departments are combined; as an example, hematology and coagulation
are often performed within the same department. Serological testing may
be spread out among various departments, with no specific department that performs
all of the serological tests. Often the department in which the procedure
is performed is the area where other, related tests are performed. An example
of this departmentalization would be the performance of serological testing for
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