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Additional Information for Patients
- What is a Laboratory Medicine (Clinical Pathology)
Doctor?
- How do I have my laboratory tests handled
by a Yale doctor?
- What Insurance Plans allow my lab work to
be done at Yale?
- Who are the Yale Laboratory Medicine (Clinical
Pathology) Doctors?
- Where can I have my blood drawn in order to have
testing done at Yale Medical Center?
- How do I find out more information on a
lab test I am supposed to have performed?
 What
is a Laboratory Medicine (Clinical Pathology) Doctor?
When your doctor orders a blood or urine test, or takes a biopsy,
all you usually know is that the sample goes to some mysterious
place ("the lab" or "pathology") and either the same day or a few
days later your doctor suddenly has a better idea of what is wrong
with you and what to do about it. The lab, however, is not really
all that mysterious a place - blood, urine and other samples are
handled in a way that is somewhat similar to what goes on in your
doctor's office. In fact, although you only meet them when you need
very special types of laboratory procedures done, there are "laboratory
doctors" (known as "laboratory medicine physicians" or "clinical
pathologists") who supervise and directly carry-out these laboratory
tests that are used to diagnose your illness and to determine what
is the best treatment for your condition. The sample that gets sent
to the lab represents (obviously) a "part of you" and that part
needs to be examined the same way the doctor examines all of you
in the office. Instead of listening to the blood with a stethoscope
or looking at it after saying "ah", the laboratory doctor applies
techniques to examine the specimen that range from the very "old"
(looking at the components of the blood or tissue with a microscope)
to the very new (analyzing complicated aspects of the DNA and proteins
in the blood with "high-tech" machinery). Some parts of this analysis
only require general supervision by the pathologist and are carried
out by automated equipment; other parts require the continuous intervention
by highly skilled technologists working under the supervision of
the pathologist; still other aspects of the analysis require detailed
consultation by the pathologist to determine how best to figure
out what is causing your symptoms.
Although the clinical pathologist is most often the "doctor's doctor"
who communicates directly with your primary physician and not directly
to you, there are a number of circumstances where you might meet
and be directly examined by the "laboratory medicine" physician.
Some procedures are frequently carried out by clinical pathologists,
for example, bone marrow examinations and lymph node aspirations.
In addition, all aspects of your care that involves blood transfusions
and/or the manipulation of your blood (such as plasmapheresis and
stem cell transplantation) are under the supervision of the laboratory
medicine physician ("blood banker"). Therefore, at Yale, if you
need to have your blood collected or manipulated or if you need
a stem cell transplant, you will meet our physicians in the "pheresis
clinic" (pheresis is the medical term for the manipulation of your
blood). Moreover, some of our physicians also have a regular office
practice, especially in the area of hematology (which has a very
great overlap with laboratory medicine) and you therefore may meet
them in that setting.
Yale's Laboratory Medicine physicians are at the forefront of devising
new diagnostic tests. In addition, some of our physicians are involved
in trying to make medicine more understandable to the general public.
Dr. Peter Jatlow, Chairman of the Department, has co-authored a
book with two other Yale physicians which is designed as a manual
for patients to understand what all those tests mean that your doctor
orders and what to expect when you are asked to go to have these
tests done. It includes information on both laboratory tests and
on radiology ("x-ray") tests. The book is:
The Patient's Guide to Medical Tests
by Barry L. Zaret MD, Peter Jatlow MD and Lee D. Katz MD (Editors)
448 pages (November 1997) Houghton Mifflin Co; ISBN: 0395765366
Similarly, Dr. Brian Smith has written the section on "Blood" for
the Microsoft Encarta '99 CD-ROM encyclopedia.
How
do I have my laboratory tests handled by a Yale doctor?/What Insurance
Plans allow my lab work to be done at Yale?
As for most other aspects of your medical care, if you have Medicare,
Medicaid, or a commercial "indemnity" insurance plan, you and your
primary doctor have your choice as to where your laboratory testing
is performed and what doctors are involved in interpreting that
testing. If you have a "managed care" insurance plan, then there
may be some restrictions on who can perform your laboratory work;
however, the vast majority of managed care plans in Connecticut
include the Yale New Haven Hospital laboratories and the Yale School
of Medicine doctors as being "in plan". Even if you have a plan
that has designated a primary "exclusive" commercial laboratory
for your laboratory work (for example, Quest Diagnostics or Smith-Kline),
the exclusivity usually refers to the exclusion of other major commercial
laboratories; frequently, hospital laboratories, in particular,
Yale-New Haven, are permitted to perform your laboratory work. We
will shortly be adding a section to this web site that will list
those insurance plans which allow use of the Yale laboratories.
Who
are the Yale Laboratory Medicine (Clinical Pathology) Doctors?
Follow the link below for a listing of Yale Laboratory Medicine
doctors, their backgrounds and specialties.
Yale Laboratory Medicine Doctors
Where
Can I have my blood drawn in order to have testing done at Yale
Medical Center?
Samples can be sent to our laboratories from anywhere across the
country. However, blood-drawing itself can only be done at the Yale-New
Haven Hospital. Click here for a
list of locations and times.
How
do I find out more information on a lab test I am supposed to have
performed?
To find out about lab tests, there are a number of books available
that tell you what to expect and the usual reasons for a particular
test being requested by your physician. One of these is co-edited
by Yale Laboratory Medicine Chair, Dr Peter Jatlow (The Patient's
Guide to Medical Tests by Barry L. Zaret MD, Peter Jatlow MD
and Lee D. Katz MD (Editors) 448 pages (November 1997) Houghton
Mifflin Co; ISBN: 0395765366).
A useful web site for obtaining more information is at: Lab
Tests OnLine
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