Pre-analytical Testing
Specimen Collection, Receiving & Processing:
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Pre-analytical testing of King Abdulaziz Medical City is one of the largest Divisions which comprise the Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) and Receiving Sections respectively. The Division is staffed by a total of 78 employees.
The Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) section provides the highest quality service for out patient with regards to the procurement of blood and pre-analytical processing of body fluid specimens. The ACC section has 11 laboratory technicians, phlebotomists, 5 receptionists/data encoders and ACC laboratory coordinators. This area caters an average of 800 patients per day. ACC section is open very Saturday to Wednesday for 0700 hr to 1700 hrs for National Guard patients and their dependents and Thursday from 0700 hr to 1200 noon and for Business Center patients, from 0700 to 2100 hrs.
The Receiving Section serves as a centralized area to receive all specimens coming from the different facilities of King Abdulaziz Medical City and National Guard Health Affairs Center situated throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Receiving section has 47 Phlebotomists and Laboratory Technicians, 2 Drivers, 3 Receptionists, 5 ER Runners that caters the pre-analytical processing to an approximate of 8,000 – 10,000 specimens daily. The section provides the highest quality service based on the international standards, CAP and JCIA, starting from the procurement of blood specimens from in patients, receipts of specimens, proper documentation, pre-analytical processing, and specimen distribution to respective Division for testing. The section is open 24/7 to provide the excellent health care among NGHA patients.
A pre-analytical instrument TECAN 500 has been recently incomparable with this section. The TECAN Instrument is to maintain the highest quality service among out patients and to continue to achieve progress for pre-analytic laboratory automation system, a new pre-analytical instrument has been acquired in Receiving Section. The TECAN analyzer is designed for multiple functions such as processing specimens from identifying the specimen tubes through scanning the barcode label, volume checking, centrifugation, aliquoting and sorting.