Effective April 26th, 2021, Spectrum Health Laboratories will discontinue 4.5 mL blue citrate blood tubes. These are a vendor discontinued item. The replacement item will be the 2.7 mL blue citrate blood tubes.
Due to this change, there may be a difference in the number of tubes required to collect for the lab tests below. Please refer to the lab catalog for specimen collection requirements.
Effective immediately there has been an update to scheduling breath testing. Both the Bacterial Overgrowth and Lactose Intolerance breath tests must be scheduled through Epic or via Spectrum Health MyChart app.
Spectrum Health Laboratory has updated its policy regarding expected date. For those providers that send an expected date of draw with your electronic order to our laboratory, there was a change on April 24, 2019 for Epic Providers and there will be a change on May 13, 2019 for EMR interface offices. From these dates forward, if you send us an expected date of draw, our phlebotomists will draw up to 14 days before your expected date and anytime thereafter until the order expires. If we do not receive an expected date of draw, we will treat the order as ready to collect from the day it arrives till one year out, when it expires. All Laboratory orders, including standing or future orders, are valid up to 400 days unless otherwise specified.
In both the inpatient and outpatient settings, the laboratory has supplied 24 hour urine containers with preservative such as acetic acid, sodium hydroxide, and boric acid. Upon review of specimen stability requirements, it has been determined that a preservative is not needed prior to collection of most 24 hour urine tests as long as the 24 hour container is kept refrigerated or on ice during the collection period.
Effective August 1, 2018, Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory will no longer stock Sequenom Collection Kits. If a patient presents with a Sequenom Collection Kit, our outpatient phlebotomy staff will continue to aid the patient in collection. If needed, please order Sequenom Collection Kits from the manufacturer.
Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory will still offer Panorama Collection Kits. For more information on Panorama testing please click here.
Effective August 8th, Spectrum Health Laboratory will ask all patients to indicate how long they have been fasting (regardless of whether they were fasting or not) when they present for Lipid testing. In light of recent discussions in the literature that debate the utility of fasting prior to lipid testing; we recognize that some clinicians may now not require their patients to be fasting and hope that reporting out length of fasting (hours) with each lipid result will allow all clinicians to better interpret their patient’s lipid results. If fasting is desired; Spectrum Health Laboratory recommends no caloric or caffeine intake for at least 8 hours. The patient is not to drink (other than water), eat, smoke, chew gum, candy, cough drops, etc. for at least 8 hours prior to their blood tests. Prescribed medications are allowed.
Spectrum Health Regional Laboratory now has ONE centralized fax number to which you can send your lab orders! This means no more searching for the fax number for a particular draw site for your patient. We will enter the faxed orders into our system, making them available to ALL of our draw sites; so your patient will have access to their order at their favorite draw site and the added convenience of going to any draw site that they choose!
*The new fax line number is: 616-774-7696
*If you are faxing an order for a patient that plans to go to a draw site immediately, please write “Patient En Route” on the order, so that it may be prioritized.
* Please note: Specimen add-on orders (additional tests for specimens in-lab) are still faxed to 616-267-2751, as stated on the add-on form.