Extended capabilities, lowered costs

Northwell Health, on Long Island, NY, made the decision to build an expanded core lab during a period of (ongoing) intense growth, which included three hospital mergers and numerous physician practice acquisitions over two years. The now 21-hospital system, which has nearly doubled the number of physicians it employs to 3,000, has acquired both redundant lab spaces and a ledger carrying large expenditures for outsourced lab services.

Northwell's existing, 60,000-square-foot core lab in Lake Success, NY, is being replaced by two automated facilities: The Core Lab, a new 36,000-square-foot building that will be devoted to biological testing and function as the hospital system's immediate connection to New York City, and 120,000 renovated square feet, devoted to chemistry-related testing, within a 1 million-square-foot building that houses Northwell's Center for Advanced Medicine, six miles away. The dual facilities will enhance performance while lowering costs.

Given that Northwell anticipated its testing growth at between 250 and 400 percent, in time a fully automated workflow and testing system was created by several different collaborating manufacturers in response to Northwell's particular needs. The nation's largest private health institution will now be able to process up to 20 million tests annually, around the clock, utilizing the platform's various analyzer modules.