The fourth dimension. Management of the postmodern clinical laboratory.

The clinical laboratory has undergone historic changes over the past decade. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 are the regulatory acknowledgement of the technological revolution that has occurred. Challenged to meet increasingly diverse medical needs while facing cost restraints, managerial leadership will replace technical leadership in the clinical laboratory. Ignored for half a century by most American industries, total quality management has been invoked as the embodiment of systems engineering and group decision making in the postmodern clinical laboratory. The matrix organization, workload recording, and productivity measuring are cost-effective applications of total quality management in the clinical laboratory.