Pathology guide for GPs

Sample delivery

The Central Specimen Reception (CSR) is in the Blood Sciences Laboratory in the Bessemer Wing at King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill. Samples for any department can be delivered to CSR 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.

Samples must be sent to Synnovis according to our packaging and transport requirements, as appropriate.

If you have any queries, contact us.

Hours of business

Weekdays

Full laboratory service, 9am to 5pm

Weekends

Clinical Biochemistry and Haematology (including Blood Transfusion) operate a 24-hour, seven days a week working pattern.

Medical Microbiology are open to deal with essential work only. Specimen received by Medical Microbiology before 10.30am will be processed on that day. Samples arriving later than 10.30am will not be processed until the following Monday unless prior arrangements have been made with the laboratory.

Outside of normal hours

An out-of-hours (OOH) service is provided between 5pm and 9am weekdays; from 12 noon Saturday until 9am Monday; and on Bank Holidays. There is an OOH service for certain urgent test requests for inpatients.

Quality assurance in pathology

Laboratory Accreditation

Synnovis King’s College Hospital laboratories are United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accredited medical laboratories to ISO 15189:2012 Standard.

Each department undergoes regular assessments by UKAS to demonstrate that the quality system in place provides a service that meets recognised quality standards (ISO 15189:2012 Standard).

A list of our accredited tests and locations can be found on our schedule of accreditation available on the UKAS website.

Quality assessment

All departments take part in extensive programmes of external quality assessment that monitor our methods and results against national standards.

Service improvement and feedback

We value feedback about our service. Please go to the Synnovis customer service page and complete our online feedback form if you have any compliments, complaints or questions.