Blood draws at the clinic

My mom’s doctor sees at least 70 patients a day. I know because she’s actually great, and when I showed up once with a referral, they told me to just swing by right before they close. The nurse logged my mom—well, me, really—as patient number 70, along with some other guy who walked in around 1:30 PM.
At the local clinic where I went for blood work last time, I showed up at 7:30 AM and didn't wrap things up until about 9:25 AM.
I finally made it into work around 10:30 AM.
The very next day, I had to head back to the hospital for some specialized blood tests.
It was pretty much the same deal; I arrived a little later, but I still finished up around the same time and ended up getting to work at roughly the same hour.
If I were working for a private company, I’d probably be looking at a disciplinary hearing, since I missed six hours of work over those two days.
On the bright side, hospitals don't even handle basic routine blood work anymore.
Honestly, I think all of this should just be consolidated into one single stop.

Kyle Lee7 said:On a good day, my primary care doctor sees about 60 patients, but on the rough days? It can hit 90. Don't ask me how I know... if they start adding blood draws to the mix, they might as well clock in at 4:00 AM. If you have a clinic with a lighter schedule, you're lucky; this place runs like a literal assembly line.

I’ve also figured out the rhythm of the lab work here. Since they open from 7:00 to 9:00, the sweet spot is arriving just a few minutes before 9:00. I’m always running a little behind, so when I rush in right before 9:00, there are only a couple of people ahead of me, and I’m usually done by 9:00 sharp.
One time, I actually showed up right at 7:00—heaven knows what I was thinking—and it was a total madhouse. There were over 30 people waiting!
I honestly don't get the obsession with showing up at 7:00 on the dot, or even worse, 6:45.
Yet, between 8:30 and 9:00, the place is practically empty.

It's probably because some people start work at 7, so they don't want to be late for their shifts. 🙂😉

There is just so much misinformation floating around here...
Basically, what’s happening is that clinics will mostly be drawing blood once a week—specifically in the mornings—so patients will have to schedule appointments. I don't think they'll be doing more than 10 draws in a 7 or 8-hour window. This means anyone coming in for an exam who actually has a fever or high blood pressure won't get seen right away—they'll just be stuck waiting for an hour! As for getting samples to the labs, the technicians handle that; they organize the transport themselves. And honestly, the funniest part? They’re drawing blood in ground-floor offices while the lab is right upstairs 😕
The bottom line of this nonsensical idea from our dear Secretary of Health is this: unhappy patients, unhappy lab techs, and unhappy primary care teams!
The result? Just more frustration for us Americans 🙂
I really wonder who stands to gain here. They claim this increases accessibility 🤣
but it's not like we're living in some remote village in Tanzania! Maybe we should just go door-to-door to draw blood if they want to make things so "easy" for people
First off—labs are staffed by specialists trained specifically for this. It’s not that nurses can’t draw blood—they can certainly practice and get it down—but until they do, they’re just going to end up bruising a bunch of patients! If nurses are forced to take over blood draws, then the lab techs should at least pick up some of their workload 😁: Secondly, they’re piling more and more onto the medical nurses—so where is the pay increase for all this extra work?!

cosmicviper11 said:There is just so much misinformation floating around here...
Basically, what’s happening is that clinics will mostly be drawing blood once a week—specifically in the mornings—so patients will have to schedule appointments. I don't think they'll be doing more than 10 draws in a 7 or 8-hour window. This means anyone coming in for an exam who actually has a fever or high blood pressure won't get seen right away—they'll just be stuck waiting for an hour! As for getting samples to the labs, the technicians handle that; they organize the transport themselves. And honestly, the funniest part? They’re drawing blood in ground-floor offices while the lab is right upstairs 😕
The bottom line of this nonsensical idea from our dear Secretary of Health is this: unhappy patients, unhappy lab techs, and unhappy primary care teams!
The result? Just more frustration for us Americans 🙂
I really wonder who stands to gain here. They claim this increases accessibility 🤣
but it's not like we're living in some remote village in Tanzania! Maybe we should just go door-to-door to draw blood if they want to make things so "easy" for people
First off—labs are staffed by specialists trained specifically for this. It’s not that nurses can’t draw blood—they can certainly practice and get it down—but until they do, they’re just going to end up bruising a bunch of patients! If nurses are forced to take over blood draws, then the lab techs should at least pick up some of their workload 😁: Secondly, they’re piling more and more onto the medical nurses—so where is the pay increase for all this extra work?!

And when does everyone else get their blood drawn? 😕
(By "everyone else," I mean the other fifty people waiting at every local clinic or community hospital across the US every single morning.)

cosmicviper11 said:There is just so much misinformation floating around here...
Basically, what’s happening is that clinics will mostly be drawing blood once a week—specifically in the mornings—so patients will have to schedule appointments. I don't think they'll be doing more than 10 draws in a 7 or 8-hour window. This means anyone coming in for an exam who actually has a fever or high blood pressure won't get seen right away—they'll just be stuck waiting for an hour! As for getting samples to the labs, the technicians handle that; they organize the transport themselves. And honestly, the funniest part? They’re drawing blood in ground-floor offices while the lab is right upstairs 😕
The bottom line of this nonsensical idea from our dear Secretary of Health is this: unhappy patients, unhappy lab techs, and unhappy primary care teams!
The result? Just more frustration for us Americans 🙂
I really wonder who stands to gain here. They claim this increases accessibility 🤣
but it's not like we're living in some remote village in Tanzania! Maybe we should just go door-to-door to draw blood if they want to make things so "easy" for people
First off—labs are staffed by specialists trained specifically for this. It’s not that nurses can’t draw blood—they can certainly practice and get it down—but until they do, they’re just going to end up bruising a bunch of patients! If nurses are forced to take over blood draws, then the lab techs should at least pick up some of their workload 😁: Secondly, they’re piling more and more onto the medical nurses—so where is the pay increase for all this extra work?!

Oh, sure, because lab techs apparently just sit around doing nothing all day—it's clearly more logical for us to pick up half the nursing workload just because they spend one hour, once a week, doing our job! 😉On any given day at my lab, we see roughly 250 people plus hospital staff and ER patients, so you can try to wrap your head around the sheer scale of what we handle.
The whole idea was to cut down on the crowds at the labs... in outpatient clinics, they only do basic screenings now, while you still have to trek to the main hospitals for anything else... and yes, technically the sample has to reach the lab within an hour, though I honestly don't know how feasible that actually is given the current situation. 🤷

I pull blood three days a week, and I’m consistently seeing way more than ten patients per shift.
It’s incredibly clumsy, too, mostly because I lack any decent workspace. To borrow a phrase from someone on the first page of this thread: I’m basically working right next to my computer, buried under a mountain of paperwork. Not to mention, I have absolutely nowhere to store the urine samples they bring in; I just end up keeping them in a box on the windowsill until someone from the lab finally wanders over to pick them up.🙄
And honestly, don't even get me started on the sheer volume of extra work that comes with phlebotomy. None of the patients seem to care that we're essentially multitasking our entire job during those draws.

@Matthew Taylor17: It’s pretty obvious that things aren't uniform across all labs. At our facility, it's a total mess—the lab techs just sit around waiting for us to finish drawing blood, then they wander around like zombies to lug the samples back to the lab. I was chatting with one of our techs the other day, and she mentioned that nobody on their team is happy with how these new protocols are playing out.

But look, this isn't the first time they've tried to push this kind of nonsense. Every single time they implement something this half-baked, it eventually falls apart.

Did I get this right? Can you still get bloodwork done at the main community health centers? Or are you strictly forced to go through your primary care physician now?

melloworca6 said:Did I get this right? Can you still get bloodwork done at the main community health centers? Or are you strictly forced to go through your primary care physician now?

Typically, you'd just go through your primary care doctor. Unless there’s some absolute emergency after hours, in which case we send everything down to the main diagnostic lab.

slywolf45 said:I pull blood three days a week, and I’m consistently seeing way more than ten patients per shift.
It’s incredibly clumsy, too, mostly because I lack any decent workspace. To borrow a phrase from someone on the first page of this thread: I’m basically working right next to my computer, buried under a mountain of paperwork. Not to mention, I have absolutely nowhere to store the urine samples they bring in; I just end up keeping them in a box on the windowsill until someone from the lab finally wanders over to pick them up.🙄
And honestly, don't even get me started on the sheer volume of extra work that comes with phlebotomy. None of the patients seem to care that we're essentially multitasking our entire job during those draws.

@Matthew Taylor17: It’s pretty obvious that things aren't uniform across all labs. At our facility, it's a total mess—the lab techs just sit around waiting for us to finish drawing blood, then they wander around like zombies to lug the samples back to the lab. I was chatting with one of our techs the other day, and she mentioned that nobody on their team is happy with how these new protocols are playing out.

But look, this isn't the first time they've tried to push this kind of nonsense. Every single time they implement something this half-baked, it eventually falls apart.

it seems it varies by location... honestly, this whole thing is absurd and should be scrapped entirely!! I won't even begin to describe how much bacteria can grow in urine samples sitting out on a windowsill...
I imagine your shifts must be a nightmare, especially when someone decides they can't make a 10:00 AM appointment and insists on being seen at 8:00 AM instead...
There's simply no way this works better than doing everything in the lab! At our clinic, we have two people drawing blood, two people transporting the samples and running the centrifuge, one dedicated to urine samples... and the rest of the crew manages the analyzers!
But really, if they were going to force this change through, they could have at least ensured the necessary infrastructure was actually in place... ☕

Matthew Taylor17 said:it seems it varies by location... honestly, this whole thing is absurd and should be scrapped entirely!! I won't even begin to describe how much bacteria can grow in urine samples sitting out on a windowsill...
I imagine your shifts must be a nightmare, especially when someone decides they can't make a 10:00 AM appointment and insists on being seen at 8:00 AM instead...
There's simply no way this works better than doing everything in the lab! At our clinic, we have two people drawing blood, two people transporting the samples and running the centrifuge, one dedicated to urine samples... and the rest of the crew manages the analyzers!
But really, if they were going to force this change through, they could have at least ensured the necessary infrastructure was actually in place... ☕

Exactly my point.
They've squeezed us from every angle, and eventually, the patients are going to feel the fallout. We're looking at wait times stretching to two weeks or more just to get a simple blood test.
Per our current regulations, we have to cover two afternoon shifts where blood draws aren't even an option, and within the remaining three days, there simply isn't enough bandwidth to see as many patients as the labs used to handle effortlessly.

Kudos to Milinović. 👋

It just paves the way for private labs to thrive. No crowds, everything stays pristine, and you get a polite smile along with your results delivered straight to your inbox the same day.

slywolf45 said:Exactly my point.
They've squeezed us from every angle, and eventually, the patients are going to feel the fallout. We're looking at wait times stretching to two weeks or more just to get a simple blood test.
Per our current regulations, we have to cover two afternoon shifts where blood draws aren't even an option, and within the remaining three days, there simply isn't enough bandwidth to see as many patients as the labs used to handle effortlessly.

Kudos to Milinović. 👋

The obvious fix would have been to allow doctors to electronically transmit orders directly to the labs so we could handle the fulfillment—but this specific approach to blood collection is fundamentally flawed... though, I suppose it’ll likely just fail like everything else does lately.😉

Paul Johnson said:It just paves the way for private labs to thrive. No crowds, everything stays pristine, and you get a polite smile along with your results delivered straight to your inbox the same day.

It’s quite possible that the whole system is practically engineered to funnel people toward those private labs! It feels like we're heading toward a reality where only the wealthy can see specialists at places like Mayo Clinic, or perhaps those lucky enough to have a "connection" at a major hospital system like Johns Hopkins. Everyone else? They'll just be left waiting indefinitely—I mean, some people are sitting on six-month waitlists for basic screenings as it stands...🙂

Paul Johnson said:It just paves the way for private labs to thrive. No crowds, everything stays pristine, and you get a polite smile along with your results delivered straight to your inbox the same day.

🙂
Then you end up taking those results straight to a private doctor to actually make sense of them—because why bother waiting in line at a local clinic or seeing a specialist through the public system? It doesn't matter; either way, you're out a few hundred bucks minimum...
all coming out of your paycheck or your Social Security checks (if you even have any left)....😂

slywolf45 said:Typically, you'd just go through your primary care doctor. Unless there’s some absolute emergency after hours, in which case we send everything down to the main diagnostic lab.

You missed my point entirely. 🙂

Up until now, there were basically two places to get blood drawn—either at the local community health center (for stuff like CBCs, electrolytes, glucose, urine tests, etc.) or at the hospital (for everything else that doesn't fall under that basic category).

What I'm actually asking is whether I have a choice now. Can I decide to go to the main community health center to get it done, or am I strictly forced to go through my own primary care doctor? I remember hearing some talk about having options—like choosing between the general practice clinic or the place where we used to go.

As for the hospital, I assume that hasn't changed and people still go there for those specific tests.

Matthew Taylor17 said:The obvious fix would have been to allow doctors to electronically transmit orders directly to the labs so we could handle the fulfillment—but this specific approach to blood collection is fundamentally flawed... though, I suppose it’ll likely just fail like everything else does lately.😉

We’ve actually had this system running smoothly for months now. A doctor just sends an electronic referral over to the lab, and by around 2:00 PM that same day, the digital results are already sitting in our inbox. It’s incredibly efficient. 😉

slywolf45 said:We’ve actually had this system running smoothly for months now. A doctor just sends an electronic referral over to the lab, and by around 2:00 PM that same day, the digital results are already sitting in our inbox. It’s incredibly efficient. 😉

You missed my point entirely—I was saying they could have just implemented that specific part without all this extra nonsense involving the ambulatory extraction process. 😉
In our local hospitals, they still deal with paper referrals, whereas at the community clinics, everything is fully digitized...

melloworca6 said:You missed my point entirely. 🙂

Up until now, there were basically two places to get blood drawn—either at the local community health center (for stuff like CBCs, electrolytes, glucose, urine tests, etc.) or at the hospital (for everything else that doesn't fall under that basic category).

What I'm actually asking is whether I have a choice now. Can I decide to go to the main community health center to get it done, or am I strictly forced to go through my own primary care doctor? I remember hearing some talk about having options—like choosing between the general practice clinic or the place where we used to go.

As for the hospital, I assume that hasn't changed and people still go there for those specific tests.

I don't really follow how that system works; I live out in the middle of nowhere.😁
Around here, we just have one single community clinic with an on-site lab. (And, naturally, the local hospital with its own biochemistry lab and transfusion center.)

But now, you don't even go to that clinic lab anymore—you just do it through your primary doctor. End of story.😉

I haven't the slightest clue how they handle this in New York City. 🤷

Matthew Taylor17 said:You missed my point entirely—I was saying they could have just implemented that specific part without all this extra nonsense involving the ambulatory extraction process. 😉
In our local hospitals, they still deal with paper referrals, whereas at the community clinics, everything is fully digitized...

Yeah, it's the same deal where I am.

Look, I’m not saying I’m 100% right—honestly, I might be totally off base here—but I figured I’d jump back into the conversation because, from where I'm sitting, the answer is... well... it's pretty multi-layered. I kind of cringed a little thinking about those laboratory loopholes, but here’s my take:

- Local clinic labs can really only run the specific tests they have contracts for under Medicare (primary care). We're talking basic stuff like a CBC, standard biochemistry, some clotting factors, and things like that which are covered by basic insurance. There might be a few extras where you have to chip in a small co-pay, like a CRP or a lipid panel. Basically, the Social Security Administration covers the basics plus a few extras if you pay the difference. So, you swing by your doctor because you've got a cough and a fever, they order a CBC and a CRP, you get the results the same day, and everything stays within the realm of primary care.
- Depending on their equipment, those same clinics could definitely run more advanced tests, but you'd likely be footing the full bill for those. It would go something like this: you show up feeling under the weather, the doctor says, "Okay, let's do a CBC and a CRP... we probably should check your PCT too, but you'd usually need to head to a hospital for that. However, if you want our lab to do it right now, you'll have to pay out of pocket at the full rate."
- A clinic lab might be capable of handling complex testing, but since those aren't part of their official contract with the Social Security Administration, the government isn't picking up the tab, so you're paying the whole thing.

- Now, a big hospital lab generally won't bother with that basic stuff mentioned above. They won't, mainly because there's no way for them to bill for it if the patient isn't actually an inpatient or seeing a specialist there—they just showed up with a referral for basic bloodwork. Plus, as far as I know, most primary care software doesn't even allow a family doctor to send a referral for basic routine labs directly to a hospital lab anyway.
- On the flip side, a hospital lab will happily draw blood for any tests requested via an internal referral by a specialist working within the hospital. For instance, if someone goes in to see an internist and that specialist orders certain tests as part of the exam—doesn't matter if it's basic or advanced—they can do it all.
- Hospital labs also handle anything covered by the Social Security Administration for tertiary care that a primary doctor requests through a specialist referral. So, if a specialist tells you to get some tumor markers or immunology tests done before your next follow-up, you get that referral from your doctor, go to the hospital lab, and they run everything you need... though you might end up with a bit of a co-pay.

Man, look at these sentences... I can barely even make sense of what I'm trying to say myself...😍...

Scott Allen10 said:Look, I’m not saying I’m 100% right—honestly, I might be totally off base here—but I figured I’d jump back into the conversation because, from where I'm sitting, the answer is... well... it's pretty multi-layered. I kind of cringed a little thinking about those laboratory loopholes, but here’s my take:

- Local clinic labs can really only run the specific tests they have contracts for under Medicare (primary care). We're talking basic stuff like a CBC, standard biochemistry, some clotting factors, and things like that which are covered by basic insurance. There might be a few extras where you have to chip in a small co-pay, like a CRP or a lipid panel. Basically, the Social Security Administration covers the basics plus a few extras if you pay the difference. So, you swing by your doctor because you've got a cough and a fever, they order a CBC and a CRP, you get the results the same day, and everything stays within the realm of primary care.
- Depending on their equipment, those same clinics could definitely run more advanced tests, but you'd likely be footing the full bill for those. It would go something like this: you show up feeling under the weather, the doctor says, "Okay, let's do a CBC and a CRP... we probably should check your PCT too, but you'd usually need to head to a hospital for that. However, if you want our lab to do it right now, you'll have to pay out of pocket at the full rate."
- A clinic lab might be capable of handling complex testing, but since those aren't part of their official contract with the Social Security Administration, the government isn't picking up the tab, so you're paying the whole thing.

- Now, a big hospital lab generally won't bother with that basic stuff mentioned above. They won't, mainly because there's no way for them to bill for it if the patient isn't actually an inpatient or seeing a specialist there—they just showed up with a referral for basic bloodwork. Plus, as far as I know, most primary care software doesn't even allow a family doctor to send a referral for basic routine labs directly to a hospital lab anyway.
- On the flip side, a hospital lab will happily draw blood for any tests requested via an internal referral by a specialist working within the hospital. For instance, if someone goes in to see an internist and that specialist orders certain tests as part of the exam—doesn't matter if it's basic or advanced—they can do it all.
- Hospital labs also handle anything covered by the Social Security Administration for tertiary care that a primary doctor requests through a specialist referral. So, if a specialist tells you to get some tumor markers or immunology tests done before your next follow-up, you get that referral from your doctor, go to the hospital lab, and they run everything you need... though you might end up with a bit of a co-pay.

Man, look at these sentences... I can barely even make sense of what I'm trying to say myself...😍...

I’m not quite following either. Is this supposed to be some kind of guide?😁