Currently there are five technologists and a supervisor working in the CAH section. The personnel consists of college educated microbiologists and medical technologists with various amounts of laboratory experience. The reagents are dispensed into the tubes containing the blood dots and allowed to incubate overnight. Automated machinery is used to dispense the reagents to ensure that every specimen is handled with the utmost precision and accuracy. The next morning another reagent is added, the tubes are centrifuged, decanted, and counted on a gamma counter.
All data is analyzed by computers.
Each batch of specimens contains standards of known values from which patient results are determined. If more than the allowable amount of controls are out of range, the specimens are repunched and repeated. This rarely happens because all instruments, reagents, and personnel are consistently and thoroughly monitored for quality control and assurance. Multiple checks by at least two technologists are carried out through every aspect of the procedure. After the patient results are obtained for the day, the highest three percent are retested in duplicate.