Lab Account

I have a lab account! Nine months to the day that I've been a licensed midwife, and I finally got my lab account set up. Goodness. There was so much political and bureaucratic red tape involved. I'm just so glad it's done.

I'm feeling so much more official now! It's really cool to see the lab requisition forms with my practice's name and info all over. Wow.

For those who are curious, licensed midwives are legally able to facilitate labwork for any woman under our care. These typically include the initial prenatal labwork that is done at the beginning of pregnancy (blood type, hemoglobin, hepatitis B status, etc), pregnancy tests, HIV tests, liver function tests, GBS culture, gonorrhea and chlamydia cultures, urine tests, and Pap smears.

My account is with LabCorp, which means I can just drop off specimens to any of their local labs, or I can ask them to come pick them up from a box that I hang over my front door. The results are faxed to me and the cost gets billed either to me, to the client, or to their insurance.

One of the services I want to offer to women as soon as I can afford to is blood serum pregnancy testing at home. The way it would work is that I would arrive at a woman's home and draw half a tube of blood. After two hours of keeping the tube upright, the blood and serum separate and the women can then use the serum to test for the hormone that determines whether she's pregnant. The actual testing part can be done in the privacy of their own home, meaning the woman and her partner (or whoever she wants) will be the first and only ones to know. The tests I can buy from our medical/midwifery supplier are just as accurate as the tests used at a hospital or clinic. I just like the idea of an extra amount of privacy and specialness, not to mention comfort and affordability.

The tests themselves aren't individually expensive, but since they are only sold in large amounts, I'll have to save up the money. Anyway, that's one of the things I plan to offer soon. The less we can all rely on our broken medical system, the better we'll be.

Who needs a urine culture? :)