The GREATEST gift, however, was from one Linkedin member who (without reading the article) articulated a fairly negative outlook on the lab … outlining it was essentially not clinically valuable or financially viable and concluding that lab medicine should be outsourced. I’ll refer to our good friend here as Poster X.

The interesting part here is not whether or not Poster X was right or wrong … it’s why there is even a discussion?

As Lab Medicine, we take pride in our contribution to health and healthcare, as we should. But why are we not getting credit? Why don’t non-lab (and even some lab-) stakeholders see us as a Strategic Engine? Why is outsourcing and budget contraction the order of the day?

To explain “why” and what we should do about it, I’m going to use a simple 2X2 matrix … applied from two perspectives.