MOLECULAR & INFECTIOUS DISEASE PATHOLOGY

The service is staffed by fellowship-trained pathologists with extensive experience in the expanding and increasingly esoteric molecular testing for oncology and infectious disease. During the pandemic, we worked tirelessly in selection, acquisition, validation and operationalization of 8 separate COVID testing analyzers, in order to meet the demand for Cottage patients and staff testing. Extensive validation studies and IT test developments requiring hundreds of hours resulted in 8 separate COVID-19 testing analyzers that has allowed COVID-19 test results to be performed in less than 15 minutes and expanded daily test capacity to over 1,000 tests per day.

Mission Pathology Consultants (MPC) provides a readily accessible and comprehensive clinical consultative service to providers on a broad spectrum of laboratory issues related to patient care. The MPC group currently provides an active consultative service to 3 hospitals, the largest independent cancer center in Santa Barbara, as well as numerous independent physician groups in Santa Barbara, North Ventura and South San Luis Obispo counties.

Our goal is to provide personalized clinician support regarding laboratory test selection and result interpretation in order to incorporate both the clinical and technical aspects of laboratory patient testing to ensure optimal diagnostic quality. The MPC group has pathologists with both general clinical and anatomic pathology training as well as subspecialty fellowship-training in hematopathology and special interest in molecular pathology. This clinical pathology service incorporates oncologic, genetic and infectious disease consultations for both inpatient and outpatient services.