2026 Lab of the Year Runner Up: Atrium Health Cabarrus Laboratory

April 7, 2026

6 min read

Atrium Health Cabarrus Laboratory Team and Executive Leadership.

Atrium Health Cabarrus Laboratory is one of the recipients of Medical Laboratory Observer's 2026 Lab of the Year Runner Up Awards! They are located in Concord, NC, with 65 full-time equivalents and 457 licensed beds. The lab includes core laboratory testing, transfusion services, anatomic pathology, histology, some microbiology, and serology.

Atrium Health’s purpose statement says, “From discovery to everyday moments, we are redefining care- for you, for us, for all.”¹

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement has been an ongoing endeavor at Atrium Health Cabarrus. This approach has resulted in increased productivity and efficiency, faster turnaround times, and reliable results.

“We are so proud of the spirit of dedication exemplified by our teammates each and every day,” said Ryan Romano, DO, Laboratory Medical Director, Atrium Health Cabarrus, Harrisburg and Kannapolis. “Working together within the laboratory, with departments throughout the hospital and with community partners, the focus our teammates direct towards quality patient care and improving the health and lives of those we serve truly sets the standard. It is humbling to see them recognized for the extraordinary work they do and a privilege to work alongside them.”

Nursing collaboration

In an effort to enhance patient safety across the health system, Atrium Health’s Cabarrus Laboratory partnered with the hospital’s nursing department. Through this collaboration, the lab developed educational tools for the nursing department demonstrating how to properly label tubes. They presented a poster at the 2025 Patient Safety fair that included an engaging game called “Stick the label on the tube” with candy incentives. They also:

Emphasized the significance of the Positive Patient Identification process and why it should be utilized for every test.
Educated nursing staff on the impact of hemolysis, low volume specimens (including blood cultures), contamination, order of draw, and clotted specimens.

Expanding on the laboratory-nursing partnership, the departments, along with Beckman Coulter held a Process Improvement (PI) event that lasted two days, focusing on specimen collection best practices. Prior to the event, the health system was experiencing diagnostic delays and workflow inefficiencies due to pre-analytical specimen collection defects such as mislabeling specimens, hemolysis, clotted and QNS specimens, PPID overrides, differences in workflows and knowledge across departments, and restricted shared data access.

During the event, the Specimen Collection PI Workgroup was developed, and the following changes were implemented, according to the lab:

Taking inventory of the existing reports
Requests for enhanced SlicerDicer and custom reporting
Shared nursing/lab dashboards were created
24/7 defect tracking was put into place
Objective prioritization
Consistent workflows
Frontline teams are provided with feedback in real-time
Targeted PDSA cycles for high-impact defect categories

This workgroup is now actively engaged facility-wide, driving to a goal of 30% decline over 90 days in specimen collection defects.

Dwight R. Roache, DHA, MHA, FACHE, Vice President, Operations at Atrium Health – Cabarrus said, “At Cabarrus, our Lab truly embodies a culture of continuous improvement. What impresses me most is their commitment to transparency and shared data, not as a reporting exercise, but as a catalyst for real change. A great example is the multidisciplinary specimen collection workgroup they built with Nursing. By standardizing workflows and using shared dashboards to pinpoint defect trends in real time, they reduced recurrent issues like mislabeled specimens and QNS rates. That level of collaboration has strengthened reliability across the entire care continuum and meaningfully improved outcomes for our patients.”

Automation

Atrium Health Cabarrus launched the Automation Workflow Group in 2025. The group consists of lab technicians and lab assistants, allowing them to share recommendations and take action to enhance operations. The lab also actively communicates with their automation system vendor, Beckman Coulter, to continuously improve automation in the lab.

When Atrium Health Cabarrus adopted a new automation system, they took the time to educate their nursing partners on the new process, emphasizing the significance of collecting high-quality specimens to generate the best results. The lab filmed a video and created educational flyers to support automation training.

Atrium Health Cabarrus Laboratory Team Beckman Automation Ribbon Cutting

Fostering the next generation of lab professionals

Staffing shortages have been burdening clinical labs nationwide. Atrium Health has been working to get high school and college students interested in the field through community outreach. In 2025, they:

Presented at three career fairs
Awarded scholarships and hospital work opportunities
Hired student interns
Provided students with “lunch and learn” sessions
Gave students lab tours and shadowing opportunities
Participated in the HYPE Summer Academy, a shadow and internship program for high school students
Participated in the PATCH career panel, a healthcare profession pathway program

Improving health

In 2025, Atrium Health Cabarrus Lab achieved a safety improvement: efficiently eliminating a radiological security and regulatory risk. They partnered with Sandia National Laboratories/Off-Site Source Recovery Program (OSRP) to remove a high-risk cesium-137 blood irradiator. To replace it, Atrium Health Cabarrus adopted RadSource’s RS 3400 X-ray irradiator, a technology that is non-radioactive and approved by the Food and Drug administration (FDA). The new technology was implemented with no interference with transfusions.

Atrium Health Cabarrus would like to thank the following organizations for their contributions to this accomplishment:

Sandia Laboratories
Office of Radiological Security (ORS)
LANL
RadSource

Only 13 counties in North Carolina offer prehospital blood transfusions, and Atrium Health Cabarrus is now one of them. They partnered with Cabarrus County EMS to launch this regulatory compliant program, giving trauma patients a higher chance of survival. They are able to provide these services without reducing the hospital’s blood supply.

Conclusion

Atrium Health Cabarrus Laboratory’s dedication to continuous improvement, education, and community outreach made them stand out during MLO’s 2026 Lab of the Year running. Gary Catarella, MBA MT(ASCP), Vice President of Operations, Atrium Health North Carolina & Georgia Divisions gave the following statement regarding the lab’s achievements. “The Atrium Health Cabarrus Lab team exemplifies what it means to deliver excellence in laboratory medicine. Their commitment to patient safety, innovation, quality, and collaboration sets a powerful standard for our laboratory. This recognition as a 2026 Lab of the Year runner-up recipient is a testament to their dedication, leadership, and the meaningful impact they make every day for the patients we serve."