P. Cappelletti

Laboratorio di Patologia Clinica, Dipartimento di Medicina di Laboratorio Azienda Ospedaliera S. Maria degli Angeli di Pordenone

In the very middle of an extremely difficult and critical evolution of the clinical lab, the discipline must overcome the distress born from uncertainty and exhaustion and affirm some perspectives of development. We recognize some kind of rationalization of the Italian clinical laboratories as unavoidable, not just because the economic drive. The real problem is the redundancy in structures and employees. A vast majority of active laboratories in Italy (> 5000, about 2500 public labs) is very scattered, and some private labs cannot attain critical mass nor representative case reports. The future demands coupling of efficiency to effectiveness; the driver is appropriateness. The “American” way to Consolidation did not decrease the test number; but it split instead the “natural” population from the lab services.