Optimal utilization of the laboratory in making clinical decisions

The clinical laboratory is an essential component in the medical care system, and laboratory information is necessary in many clinical decisions. There is no inherent conceptual reason why laboratory information should be used any differently in the decision making process from the information collected by the physician himself, but there are logistic and economic factors that prevent this. The laboratory can be considered an information system, and the performance of the entire system depends upon the effectiveness of each of the sequential steps in the information generating process. Optimization of laboratory utilization requires the identification of explicit criteria regarding when laboratory tests should be used and the development of methods to insure that the resulting data are utilized properly.