Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory Celebrates 5 years at 35 Michigan!

On September 24, 2011, Spectrum Health Laboratory undertook a major change and moved the laboratory from Butterworth and Blodgett to a new space on the 6th and 7th floors of 35 Michigan.

The model changed from a two-lab system to a Core Lab at 35 Michigan (Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory) and an immediate response laboratory at Blodgett, creating what are affectionately known as SHRL and BIRL.

In addition to this major change, the lab implemented automation, increasing productivity and decreasing time to result.

Did you know?

• We are comprised of 22 board-certified pathologists and 650 employees, including PhD scientists, ASCP-certified clinical laboratory scientists, cytotechnologists and histotechnologists.
• Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory includes the Core Lab, Toxicology, Cytology, Anatomic Pathology, Advanced Technology Laboratory, Blodgett Immediate Response Laboratory, Blood Bank at Spectrum Health Butterworth and Blodgett Hospitals.
• Our laboratories support the ED and inpatient population at Blodgett, Butterworth and Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, but that is only 35% of the testing that we perform. The rest come from outpatient visits, client volume and physician practices. Both SHRL and BIRL operate 24/7!
• The Lab Central staff completes over 1,000 specimens registrations per weekday.
• Our laboratories performed about 4.8 million billable tests in Fiscal Year 2016, an average of about 13,000 every day!
• The Spectrum Health Universal Biorepository and Histology have processed over 50,000 research samples since 2012 from more than 4,500 patients.
• Our inpatient phlebotomists performed 386,210 blood draws in the last year and our outpatient phlebotomists performed 397,345 blood draws in the last year. Over 2,000 every day! That is a LOT of patient interaction!
• In the last 5 years, our laboratory couriers have traveled 4.25 million miles! That’s over 9 trips to the moon and back!
• Our laboratory call center takes and makes 184,000 calls a year. 70,000 calls are for critical results!
• Our call center also scans in 1.5 million pages of medical records into the patient chart. Stacked up that is taller than the River House Condominiums in downtown Grand Rapids!

We are very proud of the work we do for the medical staff and patients of West Michigan. Thank you for supporting Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory!