Patient sitting in medical chair receiving a blood draw from a nurse.

Laboratory

Laboratory: Your link between technology and good health

Republic County Hospital strives to ensure patients receive quality care. The laboratory is CLIA Certified and the staff takes pride in their ability to meet the needs of the patients we serve.

Patient Care Services

Patient care services performed by the RCH Laboratory include testing for newborns, pediatric, juvenile, adult and geriatric patients. Services are provided for in-patients, out-patients- including the emergency room, nursing homes, clinics and reference work.

Laboratory Staff and Hours

The laboratory is headed by a Pathologist and Medical Director. Other laboratory personnel consist of three full-time technicians, one part-time technician and a full-time phlebotomist.

The laboratory is a 24 hour in-house laboratory operating seven days a week.

Regular laboratory hours are Monday through Friday 7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Weekend and after hours are provided by an on-call technician

Laboratory Services

The types of services RCH Laboratory provides include a wide variety of diagnostic and screening tests to aid in patient evaluation, assessment, and treatment. The areas of testing encompass the following:

●Hematology
●Coagulation
●Urinalysis
●Clinical Chemistry
●Pathology
●Microbiology
●Special Chemistry
●Serology
●Therapeutic Drug Monitoring
●Blood Banking

Chemistry Analyzer

May 23, 2018

In February of 2018, Republic County Hospital Laboratory went live with a new chemistry analyzer. This one instrument has taken the place of three smaller instruments. With this change, the lab staff is better able to serve its patients by speeding up the availability of results. For example, since January, the average turn-around time for Troponins (an enzyme used to evaluate heart damage) has been decreased by 15%!

The new analyzer is also enabling Republic County Hospital to offer additional testing that was previously sent out to a reference laboratory.

Now tests such as Iron, Ferritin, Vitamin B12, and Folate can all be performed here at Republic County Hospital, with results available for physicians within hours instead of days.