A Pathologist Remembers

One of the sweetest things about my long pathology career was the lifestyle. My duties at Holy Family Hospital and UroPartners Laboratory rarely impacted family life. There were few urgent calls and even fewer true emergencies. I endured only one “all-nighter” at Holy Family—the night of November 8, 1988. There was no medical crisis that night but it was the capstone of a very special project, the installation of the hospital’s first full-service laboratory computer system.

In the early 1980s Holy Family was a small but busy suburban Catholic hospital, overshadowed by its big-boy neighbors, Lutheran General and Northwest Community Hospitals. Despite its small stature, it was the first hospital where I encountered a computerized ordering system for lab tests. The system notified the phlebotomy team which patients needed blood drawn each morning. A special time code, 11:11, indicated a STAT draw. The network was rudimentary, but functional.

In the spring of 1988, our Director, Dr. Earl Suckow, was pressured by the hospital medical staff to install a more up-to-date laboratory system that could not only receive orders but also collate all a patient’s lab results in one easy-to-read report. This was the dawning of a new era in laboratory communications. Dr. Suckow had little interest in the details of installing a system and assigned me with our lab manager Bakul to begin the task.

Only a few, small commercial companies were providing the type of system we required. After several site visits, Bakul and I chose Terrano, an Ohio company, as our vendor. Three of our lab section managers, Marianne, Jeff, and Jana, became my team, while Terrano sent us Kay, an experienced installation expert, to guide us.

The team spent the next several months grinding through the details of designing our reporting system. Every unit of measurement had to be verified, every normal range reviewed, and every medical comment parsed. At what time of day reports would be printed, and what staff was responsible for delivering them and entering them into the patient’s charts, was negotiated with the hospital nursing staff. We even battled over the colors for the various types of reports: in-patient, out-patient, remote.

As the months passed, our team dwindled. Marianne had a complicated pregnancy, Jana resigned from the hospital, Jeff had too many other responsibilities. As Installation Day approached, Kay and I were the last survivors.

November 8th was Election Day. While the rest of the nation followed the battle between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, Kay and I began our final preparation. We verified both the lab and nursing staff had been trained, all terminals were in place, and the printers were loaded with ink and paper.

At about 5 pm we hit “Go” on the new system. Kay and I spent the night watching the orders trickle in, comparing each one to the simultaneous order in the old ordering system. We generated the draw list and labels for our phlebotomists, and began nodding off as the first test results crossed the interface from the CBC analyzer into the new computer system.

By the afternoon of November 9, it was clear that George Bush would be our next president, and that our Terrano computer system was a success. Kay and I exchanged high fives before she headed off to O’Hare and her flight to Ohio*. I told the lab night manager to call me only if absolutely necessary, and I went home and get some much needed sleep.

It was good to be a pathologist!

*In researching this post I discovered that Kay passed away four years ago at the young age of 58. I am sorry I never spoke to her again after our successful all-night installation.