Laboratory Insights Amidst COVID-19

Case Study

When the pandemic hit, one health system acted quickly to meet its own patients' needs, then shared its testing capacity with the community

The novel coronavirus global pandemic upended hospital laboratories when it first emerged in the US in early 2020 and spread in waves throughout the country. Health care providers urgently moved to reengineer operations to meet the demands of testing, triaging, and caring for patients with COVID-19. Laboratories found their workloads shift as their focus moved from routine to COVID-19 testing. As University of Chicago Medicine swiftly implemented safety and quality control measures for clinical care, its medical laboratories found ways to quickly deliver accurate diagnostic-testing results for its own patients and those in the wider community.