Linicai Laboratory Consultation

he future of healthcare delivery systems will depend on heir ability to provide the best care at the least cost. In he clinical laboratory, this translates to ensuring that lecreased test use means appropriate use. The latter is nhikely to occur unless clinical laboratories provide practicing physicians with advice on test strategy and iterpretation of results. Effective clinical laboratory conultation requires an identification with clinical problems. ‘nportant components of the identification process are fl appreciation of the probabilistic rather than determintic nature of the relation of clinical and laboratory data D disease and the inevitable tradeoff between false egatives and false positives that clinical circumstances lemand. Institution of consultation services requires that he clinical laboratory adopt a proactive approach to Ldvocating test strategy and interpreting results. Consulation on test strategy is likely to be facilitated by further levelopments in practice guidelines and by advances in iformatics and telemedicine.