Consolidation of the North Shore-LIJ Health System anatomic pathology services: the challenge of subspecialization, operations, quality management, staffing, and education.

OBJECTIVES: To describe our experience, both in meeting challenges and in reporting outcomes, of the consolidation of anatomic pathology services in the North Shore-LIJ Health System in February 2011.
METHODS: We addressed issues of governance, personnel, physical plant, quality programming, connectivity, and education.
CONCLUSIONS: The highly regulated nature of the laboratory industry and the fact that patient care necessarily never pauses require that such a consolidation take place without a break in service or degradation in turnaround time and quality while engaging personnel at all levels in the extra duties related to consolidation. Subspecialization has allowed us to better meet the needs of our in-system health care community while increasing our access to the competitive outreach marketplace.