MCI Diagnostic Center
Building a new standard for laboratory services

It’s pretty early in the day when a man in his late 40s feels a little dizzy and notices that his heartbeats are more irregular than usual. He connects to his physician’s office to get an appointment, but fails to get the slot.

He rides to the laboratory around the corner to book a metabolic panel blood test himself. “Sure thing,” says the receptionist. “Can I see your lab slip please?” Realizing that lab tests can only be booked only with a physician’s lab slip, he finds himself helpless and decides to follow suit like many others.

Patients need to wait for days (if not weeks) to schedule an appointment, get diagnosed, have lab slips for a lab case, and finally know the result from their doctor. It might typically cost them dearly—not just for the test but for visiting a doctor who must order the test. Imagine how arduous this would be for patients looking for life-saving blood work or a COVID-19 test.

“Fortunately, the pandemic-induced disruptions in the healthcare industry introduced once in a generation shift in the way it operated. Patients are well aware that they can directly walk into a lab, order a test, and have it done without the need for a doctor’s recommendation or referral,” says Colleen Payne Nabors, the Founder and COO of MCI Diagnostic Center.

It’s now safe to say this radical idea of allowing patients to order lab tests is the next big thing in the industry and what MCI Diagnostic Center, a leading National Reference Laboratory, has in its pipeline.

By encouraging patient-directed lab testing, referred to as direct access testing (DAT), the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) is taking a significant leap toward enhancing the efficiency of healthcare delivery. The company aims to position itself as a self-service laboratory that patients can rely on to get their life-saving tests done and have the results back quickly.

“We are revolutionizing the healthcare space by taking laboratory science to the forefront of care delivery and making it more patient-facing,” says Colleen.

A Strong Legacy, the Foundation to All

This patient-centric approach is nothing new to MCI Diagnostic Center. It has been the company’s core value since 1998 when Colleen laid its foundation to deliver patient care from a diagnostics standpoint. Having worked in the medical field for decades, she witnessed first-hand the importance of a patient-driven approach for an excellent medical journey. Inspired by her passion for people, processes, and technology in healthcare, Colleen established a mobile nuclear testing facility intending to make patients’ care paths easier and more convenient.

What started as a small diagnostic center in Oklahoma has now evolved into a leading laboratory testing services provider with a national footprint. Today, MCI Diagnostic Center is the largest accredited laboratory in the U.S., providing high complexity testing in all 50 states, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

The company is accredited by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), College of American Pathologists (CAP), Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “We pride ourselves on being one of only three laboratories in the country to provide the nationwide clinical laboratory testing,” mentions Colleen.

MCI Diagnostic Center provides a caring, professional, and diverse environment to patients, employees, and physicians while offering safe and effective testing centers.The company is always committed to supporting its broad clientele by fulfilling their requirements and adhering to local, state, and federal regulations. MCI Diagnostic Center achieves this entire feat with its exceptional quality and patient care, combined with its novel technologies and best practices in action.

By empowering physicians with the right information necessary to make meaningful clinical decisions, it enables them to provide the best care to patients, ensuring their well-being.

A Patient-Centric and Customer-First Approach

While patient-centricity lies in the nucleus of MCI Diagnostic Center’s business operations, its customerdriven approach acts as the membrane that protects the core. Having this combination in the right proposition enables the company to position itself as a leader in laboratory sciences, providing over 2,500 tests that include various viruses and bacteria, esoteric testing, COVID-19, and antibody testing. It has also gained a strong reputation for its prowess in delivering drug toxicology and Pharmacogenetic testing to ensure that the pain medication matches the patient’s DNA. MCI Diagnostic Center is unique for its ability to perform its own testing rather than just serving as a collection site and sending out data to other labs.

Fast turnaround time is another aspect that makes MCI Diagnostic Center the most sought-after player in the laboratory services space. Being able to serve as an extension of physicians’ offices, the company provides them with immediate access to laboratory services by streamlining the entire testing process—from ordering tests to collecting results.

Clients can log in to MCI Diagnostic Center’s intuitive and secure platform to order any test based on their patients’ medical conditions. The company also helps them overnight the specimen off to its lab within 24 hours of collection by leveraging its relationships with leading national carriers. Samples are then tested at its state-of-the-art facilities, and the results will reach physicians and patients quickly. The platform allows for monitoring patients’ care paths where a user can track the specimen during its transit, arrival, and processing. All these help the company to stay at the forefront of delivering excellent patient care and turnaround to stakeholders across the U.S.

A Responsive Partner

MCI Diagnostic Center’s legacy, proven technology, and industry best practices, coupled with its detailed attention to customer needs, enable it to serve a broad customer base. The company has been recognized as a leader in supporting the country’s efforts to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus by leveraging its unrivaled testing capabilities and in-depth laboratory science expertise. It worked with several government agencies and private entities, including the city of Dallas and the Department of Labor, to perform COVID-19 testing in an agile and efficient fashion.

In the pursuit of saving the lives of Texans, MCI Diagnostic Center served as part of the Texas Emergency Management team, providing COVID-19 testing to citizens. The company also extended its expert set of hands to include several homeless communities, Salvation Army, and emergency shelters into the testing umbrella.

Not just that, under its special contract with the city of Dallas, MCI Diagnostic Center offered in-home sample collections for elderly people who were unable to visit a collection site.

The collaboration with the City of Dallas Department of Aviation was another prestigious success story for MCI Diagnostic Center. Here, the company partnered with the client to bring a COVID-19 testing and vaccine site to Dallas Love Field Airport. Customers could obtain a COVID-19 test at this pop-up site by registering with MCI Diagnostic Center using their easy-to-use patient portal. It also secured a contract with the Richardson Independent School District (RISD) to provide turnkey COVID testing, laboratory services, and vaccine deployment for their staff and students.

MCI Diagnostic Center attributes these successes to its adaptive capabilities and vendor relationships, which empowered it to gain a stronghold in the latest technologies and processes. The company’s strategic partnership with Abbott Laboratories equipped it with the m2000 system, making it a key player in the U.S. administration’s fight against the virus under the leadership of Deborah Leah Birx. During the pandemic, MCI Diagnostic Center was on the ground in 17 states, providing life-saving testing for COVID.

Powering the Future with Technology

Aspiring to be the pioneer in the DAT space, MCI Diagnostic Center is leveraging its strategic vendor partnerships to facilitate infrastructure development projects. This is critical, as changing the status quo of physician or facility-directed lab testing requires better infrastructure backed by advanced technologies. As such, the company is now accelerating its efforts to augment its laboratory information system (LIS), patient portals, and platform to accommodate the influx of patients and deliver results back to them within the same timeframe.

MCI Diagnostic Center is partnering with MEDLINE to make its website more patient-friendly, educate them on the benefits of patient-facing lab services, and simplify the process. The website will also be incorporated with a comprehensive set of instructions specific to each test, provided to patients when they order the test. This includes over 50 tests, ranging from simple COVID and pregnancy tests to influenza diagnostics.

“We are the blueprint for the future generation of patient-directed lab testing, and continue our pursuit to provide unsurpassed laboratory services nationwide,” adds Colleen.