What are the short- and long-term implications to patient safety of having a suboptimal lab director?
The short-term harm can be relatively minor, but the long-term damage can be severe and even catastrophic. In fact, disengagement of the lab director has been fundamental to the catastrophic failures that have afflicted a handful of labs in the last decade. There are two metaphors that I use to describe the implications of having a disengaged medical lab director. The first is that a disengaged or incompetent lab director is like a ship at sea losing its captain. The ship may go on sailing without incident for awhile, but eventually it will slowly drift and run aground. During the period of drift, people on the inside may not even notice, until it is too late to avoid serious harm to patients. Similarly, loss of an active and competent medical director is like a car running out of oil. The car will run fine for awhile. By the time the oil loss disables the car, you end up having to do an expensive repair on the whole engine, or even replace it. Q: In the common case of a community hosp
