Most facilities that are unhappy with their laboratory don't switch. They complain, they work around it, they absorb the delays and the billing problems — and they stay. Not because the current lab is good enough, but because switching feels like it carries more risk than staying.

That instinct is understandable. Your residents need continuity. Your nurses have enough on their plates. And nobody wants to be the administrator who broke lab services during a transition.

But the risk is usually smaller than it feels, and it's mostly front-loaded into a short setup window. Here's what actually happens when a facility changes lab partners.

Start with what's actually broken

Before evaluating anyone new, get specific about what isn't working. Vague dissatisfaction leads to switching to a lab with the same problems in a different order.

Common failure points worth naming:

  • Turnaround. Are results arriving too late to act on the same day?
  • Billing. Are you absorbing write-offs from misclassified Part A charges, or getting billed months after the fact?
  • Communication. When something goes wrong, do you get a person or a ticket number?
  • Consistency. Is the phlebotomist different every week? Are draw times unpredictable?
  • Result delivery. Is your staff manually transcribing faxed results into the chart?

Whatever your list is, that becomes the set of questions you ask a prospective lab — and the baseline you measure against after the switch.

What the setup process actually involves

For most facilities, getting a new lab account operational takes about a week. Here's what happens in that window.

Account setup and paperwork

This is the fast part. Facility information, billing arrangement, contacts, and a business associate agreement. A lab that works with facilities regularly has this standardized and can turn it around quickly.

Standing orders and protocols

Any recurring orders — monthly panels, INR monitoring schedules, routine draws tied to specific residents — need to transfer. This is worth doing carefully rather than quickly. A standing order that doesn't make it across is a missed draw nobody notices until someone asks why a result is late.

Ask your prospective lab how they intake standing orders and who verifies the list is complete.

EMR integration

For nursing facilities, this is usually the longest step. If your facility runs PointClickCare, the lab needs to be set up as a connected provider before results can flow into resident charts electronically.

This isn't complicated, but it does involve coordination between your facility, the lab, and PointClickCare — which means it depends partly on scheduling outside anyone's direct control. Start this conversation early rather than treating it as an afterthought.

A lab that has done PointClickCare integrations before will know what they need from you and roughly how long it takes. One that hasn't will figure it out on your timeline.

Routes and scheduling

Draw times get established, coverage is assigned, and your nursing staff learns who's coming and when. If a consistent early-morning window matters to your operations — and for fasting draws it usually does — establish that expectation now rather than after the first few chaotic weeks.

You don't have to cut over all at once

This is the part most facilities don't realize is available, and it's what removes most of the actual risk.

You can run parallel. Keep your existing lab handling some orders while the new lab handles others, for as long as you need to feel confident. Start with routine monthly panels on a subset of residents. See whether turnaround is what was promised. See whether the phlebotomist shows up when they said. See whether results land in the chart correctly.

Then expand once you've verified it works.

At Advance Medical Lab we support parallel running during transitions, because we'd rather earn the full account by demonstrating the service than ask a facility to take it on faith. If a prospective lab pushes for an immediate full cutover, that's worth asking about.

What to ask before you commit

Beyond the standard evaluation questions, these are specific to the transition itself:

  • How long does account setup typically take from signed agreement to first draw?
  • Have you integrated with PointClickCare before? What do you need from us, and what's the realistic timeline?
  • Will you support running parallel with our current lab during the transition?
  • How do you handle standing order intake, and who verifies nothing was missed?
  • Who is our point of contact during setup, and does that person change after we go live?
  • What happens in the first month if something doesn't work as expected?

That last one matters. Every transition has friction in the first few weeks — a missed draw, a result that goes to the wrong place, a standing order that needs correcting. The question isn't whether that happens. It's whether the lab treats it as a problem to solve or a complaint to log.

Timing the switch

A few practical considerations on when to do it:

Avoid survey windows. If you're expecting a survey, don't be mid-transition. Wait until after.

Mind the billing cycle. Transitioning at the start of a month makes reconciliation cleaner than switching mid-cycle, particularly for Part A bundled charges.

Don't switch during a staffing crunch. Transitions require a small amount of attention from your nursing and administrative staff. If you're short-handed, wait two weeks.

Give your current lab appropriate notice. Check your existing agreement for a notice period. Professional exits keep the door open, and you may need records from them later.

The cost of staying

It's worth being honest about the other side of this calculation.

Staying with a lab that isn't working has a cost too — it's just distributed and invisible in a way that a transition isn't. Delayed results that push care decisions into the next day. Billing write-offs absorbed quarter after quarter. Nursing time spent chasing a lab that should have called. Avoidable transfers because a result didn't arrive in time to act on.

None of that shows up as a line item. A transition does. That asymmetry is why facilities stay with vendors they'd never choose today.

If you've been meaning to make a change and keep deferring it, the setup window is about a week. The disruption is real but brief, and parallel running means you never have to take it on faith.

If you're evaluating options, our guide on what nursing homes should look for in a laboratory partner covers the criteria worth weighing.