Laboratory Services
La Maestra
Community Health Centers laboratory is recognized as having
a significant role in the delivery of quality patient care.
Each year, we have increased the quality and quantity
of care for the patient in the laboratory services.
We have performed about 16,916 in house lab
testing and 21,773 outsource lab specimens to send
out this year.
With three different sites of the clinic:
City Heights, El Cajon, and National City clinic, La
Maestra laboratory have five full time phlebotomists
employees, three part timer staffs, and one per diem.
Laboratory opens from Monday to Friday at 8:30 am to
6:00 pm and Saturday from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.
The in house laboratory testing makes
all efforts to provide any test needed for physicians in
diagnosis of patients care in the clinic.
In our laboratory, we have different kinds of
instrument to perform in house lab testing such as
Hemoglobin 201+ analyzer to check for anemia, Dia-Screen 50
machine for urinalysis, glucose 201 for blood sugar check,
DCA Vantage to check Hemoglobin A1C for diabetes patient,
strep throat, influenza, pregnancy test, urine drug test,
and fecal occult blood test to check for colon cancer.
With the growing of the clinic and increasing in
patients, we have increased more instruments available to
perform the immediate test that support providers to
diagnosis and treat patient quickly, and with greater
convenience for patients.
For example, with three sites of clinic, laboratory
has a total of five Hemoglobin 201+ analyzers, four
Dia-Screen 50 machines for urinalysis, and four DCA Vantage
analyzers to check for Hemoglobin A1C.
In addition, we also draw blood everyday from infant
to the elder patient for all different kinds of blood
testing including process the specimen to send out to the
laboratory.
Besides of perform in house lab and
draw blood for patients every day, La Maestra laboratory
also contributes in patients care throughout different
services. With
outreach funded program, in last April and May 2010,
laboratory's staffs worked well with the Environmental
Health Coalition organization that we performed around 300
free lead testing for the children by Lead Care II analyzer.
We also processed extra 100 Pap smear specimens from
the outreach patients from Women Health Care organization to
send out laboratory.
The laboratory maintains ongoing
quality control, proficiency testing and performance
improvement programs designed to objectively and
systematically monitor and evaluate the quality of services.
We have several program to help patients at no charge
for their labs as the (EAPC) Extended Access Primary Care,
CCC Impact (councils community care) from psychiatric
program.
Special of family (SOFP) to check STD for patients, Cancer
detection program (CDP) to screen the Pap smear for patients
when they do not have insurance or not qualify for SOFP.
The sliding scale for the lab fee
also applied to patients with low income and usually
patients can save up to 60 percent discount from the
original price.
Therefore, most of patients were seen by our physicians
always complete their lab requirements to help physicians
have a better diagnosis.
La Maestra laboratory also provide
several lab tests for prenatal care patients such as blood
drawn for the obstetric profile, HIV, screening glucose test
for diabetes, testing for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia or
checking Down Syndrome (AFP) on the first and second
tri-semesters.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is also check for pregnant patients
including with patients who do not qualify for state program
testing.
With the electronic laboratory
services all three sites of the clinics, we are able to
access patients lab order and receive a quick lab result
through our care 3620 and 4medica program to establish
patients care faster and better.
This program is also helping us to easy tracking
patients on I2I system and the billing purpose.