There are many complaints about employees in LabCorp locations throughout the country mistreating patients. Deb sent me an email about her unfortunate encouter in LabCorp’s Arlington Virginia Location. What one would expect to be a 5 minute event turned into an hour ordeal. Why? Just because they can. Management in these LabCorp locations does not seem to care about patient satisfaction. After all, LabCorp is the low-price leader to HMOs and insurance companies. Who needs to treat people with the respect that they deserve when you get them through pricing practices. While I find Laboratory Corporation of America employees who treat patients this way revolting, it’s really managements fault. The supervisors do not seem to care and just push for production. Patients will complain as Deb did about the Arlington VA location, but management does nothing about it.

I went to LabCorp in Arlington VA last Saturday am in the middle of a snowstorm that was getting worse by the minute. All I had to do was drop off a specimen, and I informed them of that the minute I walked in. After two more interruptions by me asking why I couldn’t just drop it off, they finally took it from me – an hour after I walked in the door. So, I sat for an hour in a waiting room filled with sick people (and I am not sick), while 8 inches of snow was falling and the roads getting worse by the minute, and they couldn’t be bothered to take a plastic bag of test tubes from me. They weren’t even apologetic. I think I would have been there another hour if I hadn’t finally thrown a huge FIT at the desk.

I wrote an email complaining to them about this, but you know they won’t even respond to it. They are a terrible company.

Here’s a very common complaint. Patient walks into a LabCorp location, has blood drawn, LabCorp loses the blood samples and still bills for the test. This very illegal LabCorp billing practice will eventually backfire. How can LabCorp billing charge for an exam that they did not do? Worse yet, how could they lose the blood samples? Even worse, can it have been tested and another patient receive the results as if their own? It all reminds me of a Looney Toons cartoon I used to watch when I was a little kid. A long floppy eared dog goes running after another animal and stops in its track saying “which way did he go??? Which way did he go???”

Here’s an email that I recently received. It tells the complete story:

Couldn’t believe that there is a whole website devoted to Labcorp screw ups! On November 23rd, 2009, my husband and I both went to Labcorp with physicians work orders in hand. After waiting about an hour, we finally had our respective blood drawn. My husband’s was routine. I am a cancer patient and had two orders, one from my oncologist and the other from my primary care doctor. Even though the facility was very busy and it was a Monday (I should have known better), there was only one phlebotomist on hand. She stated that she was the only one drawing blood there for the past month.

We never heard from our doctor with the results, so on a visit this past weekend, we asked our doctor what the results were. She stated she never received them and proceeded to call Labcorp. She was told they had no record of us going into their facility in November. On a hunch, I called our provider, Humana, on Monday and was told Labcorp had billed them over $500 for my labwork on November 23rd and also had billed them for my husband’s. So, according to labcorp, we never went there on November 23rd, yet they billed Humana over $500!! Meanwhile, we had to have our blood re-drawn yesterday. This time we went to Quest Diagnostics. Maybe we’ll have better luck there. I have filed a complaint with Internal Affairs at Humana and hope to follow up with a letter to labcorp if I can find the proper person to send it to.

Carolyn

LabCorp in Orlando, Florida seems to be a big mess. It seems that Mickey Mouse can probably do a better job
with patients than LabCorp’s Orlando employees. Here’s an email I recently received from Debbi about her
husband, a former LabCorp patient.

We had a similar experience with Labcorp here in Orlando. The wait is ridiculously long. Their staff is short. They got my husband’s test wrong and he had to go back. They didn’t get the results faxed to the doctor. He had to be on the phone with them several times to get them to get the results to the doctor. When he went back a second time to re-do the test, the lady who was in charge was rude and hurried and did a horrendous job taking the blood. He said he’s never had that kind of experience with a blood test before. My husband who very seldom gets angry at people, was livid. Our endocrinologist had sent us there for some reason. We prefer Quest which is only a few buildings down from Labcorp. Quest makes appointments. The wait is reasonable. The staff is professional and they always have several staff working together at the same time.

We will tell our endocrinologist that we will not be going back to Labcorp.

Thank you, Debbi in Orlando

I received this complaint that was also submitted to Labcorp through the patient feedback section of their web site. Complaints like this one should be immediately followed up by LabCorp managers. Whether they are followed up or not, now that’s a different story. LabCorp’s regional managers tend to find secondary excuses for the complaints. In other words, they find ways to blame the patient instead of the LabCorp employees who are poorly trained or worst yet, poorly supervised. That seems to be the universal problem in almost all LabCorp regions.

I recommended to Nancy that she contact United Health Care and notify them about the incident with her child. Hopefully that will persuade United Health Care to select better quality lab service providers. Here’s Nancy’s complaint:

I had to take my 11 year son to Labcorp yesterday in Deland Florida and we had a HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE. First the tech gave him something to squeeze, tied off one arm, poked and prodded with her finger, untied it, tied off the other arm and did the same. Took the tourniquet off and called in a co-worker to “hold his arm, he wasn’t co-operating.” I said to her, “He’s holding perfecting still, what do you mean he’s not cooperating?” She said “He’s not squeezing hard enough”. She then stuck him with the needle, nothing came into the vacutainer tube, she then proceeded to stick it in DEEPER and wiggle it around……I told her take it out, she had one shot, and by this time he was crying and I hadn’t seen him cry in years….She then says, “Well do you see how thick his arms are for a kid?” “Go take him to the hospital” and as she took the tourniquet and supplies away I saw that it was a glass blood tube that she was having him squeeze…he was afraid he’d break it……I still have to get his blood work done but I’m checking other labs for cost because my United Health care pays for Labcorp only and I’d rather pay out of pocket than go to Labcorp again. I was going to go to another site but after reading all the complaints online it seems they are all as equally unprofessional, rude and inadequately trained.

Here’s the email I sent her:

Nancy:

I posted your incident on the labcorpsucks.com website, and withheld your name. How sad that they would do that to a child. I highly recommend that you contact United Health Care and let them know of how your son was treated. They might even authorize you to go to another lab or have the blood drawn at a doctor’s office. Having unqualified or poorly trained personnel at a lab service center is the fault of management. I have noticed that there are many complaints about management in your region. Please feel free to refer United Health Care supervisors to see how many complaints are posted on labcorpsucks.com. Hopefully that will move them to stop using LabCorp and select a lab services provider that will provide higher quality health care services for their insured. I will also forward your incident to Florida’s AHCA (Agency for Health Care Administration). I highly recommend that you call Florida’s AHCA and file a complaint with them as well. Here’s the info on how to file a complaint in Florida:

Consumer Complaint, Publication and Information Call Center

The agency provides a toll-free telephone system for consumers to call in order to file complaints, receive publications, information and referral numbers. This system can be accessed by calling the number below between the hours of 8:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Eastern Time Monday through Friday. Complaints about health care facilities are taken during regular business hours, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Eastern Standard Time (EST).

(888) 419-3456

For registering your complaints, requesting publications or requesting information, use the following options:

Press Option 1

Available Monday – Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., EST. To file a complaint about a health care facility. The call center can also refer you for information on facilities.

Good luck.

I have been reading some of the comments posted by LabCorp employees in this blog. It’s interesting how many of them blame everyone else but themselves for the poor service that patients get at LabCorp centers. According to the employees posting, the doctor, the insurance company and even the patient themselves are at fault. I would have to agree with them. Everyone else but you is at fault for bad health care.

The doctor, for sending the patient to the LabCorp center in order to get a blood test. The insurance company, for going with the lowest bidder and allowing LabCorp into their network of providers. The patient, for allowing their doctor and insurance company to send them to LabCorp for blood tests. They are all at fault that Labcorp has deteriorated as a service provider. It’s their fault that the test results can’t be trusted. It’s their fault that centers close early and that employees treat the patients with such disrespect.

It’s not the fault of the mid-level manager that strives to make a quick buck so that the upper manager commends them. It’s not the Patient Services supervisor who has not idea of what “real” patient services means. It’s not the service center receptionist who treats patients as though they are doing them a favor by taking their blood. It’s not the laboratory personnel that quickly runs blood tests through the system so that they can meet their daily quota, disregarding the quality standards that insure the accuracy of the tests.

Employees who were sent here to defend the company, my recommendation to you is that you have all your fellow employees look in the mirror to see who is really at fault for bad health care. My recommendation to the doctors, insurance companies and patients that are causing all these problems. Stop sending, paying or going to LabCorp for tests. That should resolve all the problems.