Summary of Specifications:
The Washtenaw County Public Health Department is seeking proposals from qualified medical laboratories to provide laboratory services for medical examiner.
Background: The Medical Examiner’s Office (ME) is required to provide laboratory reports on all autopsies. The types of post-mortem samples will include but are not limited to blood, vitreous, urine, and other tissue as deemed necessary by the ME. The number of cases is at least (300) per year. This volume is not intended to be a guarantee of work, and should only be used as an estimate.
Scope of Work: The contracted laboratory will be expected to follow a standard progression of testing required to make a forensic diagnosis in a reasonable fashion and time.
Routine tests may include but are not limited to blood alcohol, drug screens both standard and wide range, vitreous volatiles and poisons such as strychnine, arsenic and cyanide. In a few other cases, electrolyte levels in vitreous fluid, blood mastocyte degranulation products, levels of carbon monoxide, presence of succinylcholine and heavy metals can be requested.
Any test that the contracted laboratory cannot perform shall be automatically sent to another facility that can perform the test. These outside laboratories should be listed in the proposal as sub-contractors. The County desires to pay only the contracted laboratory, and therefore should not receive invoices from the sub-contractors.
The contracted laboratory shall provide storage space for all specimens for a minimum of two (2) years. The proposal shall describe the storage details and how the physical and informational retrieval process works.
All results shall be quantitative in form, not only positive or negative.
A complete report shall be faxed to the ME’s Office as soon as testing is completed after receipt of the specimens. The original report should be mailed within 4 weeks of receipt of the specimen.
The contracted laboratory shall provide written instruction and procedures for the collection of specimens.
A customer service representative shall be available during regular business hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to assist ME staff with questions and problems. A senior lab technician with experience in forensic toxicology should provide the customer service.
The laboratory shall provide the ME’s office with required packaging materials in sufficient quantities so as to be able to preserve and transfer all specimens as required.
The contracted laboratory shall provide the ME with monthly invoices with the name of the patient, date of service, test(s) description and the charges.
