"The lab at St. Andrews runs a tight ship, often going beyond the minimum regulations to assure quality work and safety to employees and patients," states the CLIA inspector at St. Andrews' exit interview.

Recently, St. Andrews underwent a two day inspection by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regulates all laboratory testing (except research) performed on humans in the U.S. and they do this through the CLIA. In total, CLIA covers approximately 189,000 laboratory entities. The objective of the CLIA program is to ensure quality laboratory testing. Although all clinical laboratories must be properly certified to receive Medicare or Medicaid payments, CLIA has no direct Medicare or Medicaid program responsibilities.

During this two-day inspection performed by a state or federal CLIA inspector, a laboratory's testing procedures and policies, equipment, documents and records, and personnel records are verified to make sure that not only are the tests being performed correctly, but also the staff performing the tests have the right credentials and ongoing education. Laboratory testing is categorized by the level of its complexity. CLIA puts all lab tests into categories of waived, moderate or high complexity. Most hospital labs perform a combination of all three of these categories. Every medical lab whether in a hospital, physician's office, or commercial setting must demonstrate to the state and federal government every two years through a CLIA Survey that they are complying with the regulations.

If the lab does not demonstrate that they are complying with one of many regulations that they are being inspected by, they may receive a deficiency in that area. It may be in an area of safety, education, or testing protocols. "The fact that the lab at St. Andrews passed their survey with no deficiencies, demonstrates that the St. Andrews Healthcare strives to provide excellent healthcare and services to this community," states Fay Bascom, Laboratory Manager at St. Andrews.