Pros
Quest provides high quality lab services at convenient locations. I’m proud of their commitment to quality. They’re also pretty transparent. With the many cons I’m about to list, they’re still better than other companies. This is a rough industry.
Cons
Our actual operating costs verses the allotted budget must be drastically out of sync. Management harangues us about overtime but there is no choice when a patient shows up two minutes before closing. We got an email about not being 1 minute late while at the same time constantly getting emails about not clocking in early—not even 2 minutes. It’s hard to clock in right on the dot because it takes a couple minutes to log in and set up. If patients are there 15 minutes before we open and I have to immediately dive into my day, I’m not working for free but that’s apparently what they want us to do. New SOPs are sometimes poorly communicated—if you have a question about a new or changed process the Lead will say one thing and the Supervisor says another. Our lab software is glitchy and not very intuitive. We promise 15 min. service that can’t always be upheld due to accepting walk ins and appointments let alone the human factor. Patients are scared, have bad veins, get sick, have multiple orders from different doctors—we may have to call the doctors for clarification. We’re literally timed from the moment a patient checks in to the moment we check them out. We’re also required to enter/update demographics, copy the insurance card and take payments. After all of that if the patient has special needs or difficult veins you’re looking at a 25 min. interaction. They only hire when they’re desperate so the training is usually rushed and incomplete due to needing to send trainers (and the new hires in tow) to PSCs that need immediate and unplanned coverage.