Lab chaos

I know its probably wrong, but I feel I must take the opportunity to call out Quest Diagnostics for thier lousy job in handling not one, but two of Drew's blood samples in the course of three days.
Friday we went see our pediatrician, Dr. Young, so that Drew could get a school physical and a sports physical since he wants to play football this year. After talking with Dr. Rob, we'd determined that he could play as long as platelets were 50,000 or above. So, Dr. Young wrote out a script to take to Quest on the way home to get the blood draw (this saves an hour long drive out to Dr. Rob) Dr. Young told us that she, or the nurse pract. Stephanie would call us with results that night. So, we went by the lab, got the blood drawn and went on our way to buy cleats at Sports Authority. We came home, heard nothing and waited, waited and waited more. Finally around 9:00 that night, Stephanie called to tell us that Quest was unable to process the results, claiming that Drew's blood had clotted off and there was a big clump of platelets preventing them from getting an accurate count. Steph called in a new order for us to go either Sat morning or Monday morning.
Monday morning we woke up bright and early, and called back to Dr. Rob's office and asked if they could fax or send via computer a script for a blood draw so that the results could go directly to them, rather than to the pediatrician then to them so we'd cut out the middle man if we were going to have to go to Dr. Rob's to get treatment anyway. We then went down to Quest, who suprise, suprise couldn't find Dr. Rob's orders. This is an ongoing issue folks. They did however, have the one Stephanie had sent. Okay fine, that will do. It means an extra chain of phone calls if he's low, but no biggie. We get the blood drawn and the phlebotomist informs me that we'd get results...tomorrow. No way, I tell her, I have to know today. She then tells me that the test was ordered as routine, not stat. So, I go home, I call Stephanie and they call the lab to change it over to stat so we can get results SOON. But ooops! Quest looses the sample altogether and when night falls and Stephanie calls them to track it down, they can't find it. Anywhere. Tuesday morning, the sample shows up...in Kansas City. They had forgotton to send it with the Stat pile and accidentally kept it with the routine pile. So they promise to have results in an hour as now Stephanie isn't thrilled with them either. An hour later they call report that Drew's platelet count is 8,000. This isn't good people! Normal is 150,000-300,000. He's quite low.
So, Quest calls Stephanie, Stephanie calls me, I call Dr. Rob and Dr. Rob says bring him now.
We then spent alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of that day getting treated at clinic. At the end of the day, Dr. Rob wrote me out a paper prescription for a STANDING ORDER meaning as often as we want, continuously, and STAT EVERY TIME! SO help me, if I have any more problems with Quest, I might go crazy. I suppose I could go elsewhere, but don't even get me started on LABCORP. Why must outpatient labs be so inefficent and posess no streamlined way to access information. It drives me up a wall.
Things turned out well though, Drew got his treatment and is better and out of danger. Next Thursday, back to Quest again....