At 2025 Lab Manager Leadership Summit Clinical Lab Track, Experts Will Explore Community Distrust and Regulatory Environment

With clinical laboratories being asked to do more with less staff—all while absorbing lower test reimbursement rates and tiptoeing through an unstable regulatory environment—labs may need leaders more than ever.

With that in mind, we offer a bright spot: The 2025 Lab Manager Leadership Summit, an in-person event taking place April 7-9 in Pittsburgh. Of note is the Lab Manager Leadership Summit clinical lab track, which will feature a roster of top-notch experts.

The clinical laboratory sessions will focus on managing staff and operations in this setting and will not discuss diagnostic or medical topics. The track aims to help all attendees walk away as stronger leaders.

With that in mind, the track’s keynote will be given by Octavia Peck Palmer, PhD, FADLM, BS, director of the division of clinical chemistry in the section of laboratory medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is also immediate past president of the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine.

Palmer’s keynote, “How to Combat Misinformation in Your Clinical Laboratory’s Community,” will center on less well-known examples of distrust labs contend with. For example, Palmer will discuss what role labs can play when patients get discordant information about test reference ranges from different primary care physicians. 
 “If labs want to be part of the decision-making ecosystem, we have to demonstrate value” in collaboration with physicians, Palmer says.

Additional learning during the clinical lab track

Here is a rundown of other sessions for the Lab Manager Leadership Summit clinical lab track:

“Leading Clinical Labs During Challenging Regulatory Times”

Presenter: Kelly VanBemmel, MS, MB (ASCP) CM, laboratory operations supervisor at Devyser Genomic Laboratories.

Focus: Rather than allow bench scientists and supervisors to become numb to myriad clinical lab regulations, forward-thinking lab leaders can instead take a different approach that embraces the rules and helps connect dots among the different oversight agencies.

“Succession Planning: How to Find and Prepare Your Future Replacement”

Presenter: Curtiss McNair Jr., MBA, BS, vice president of operations at PanGia Biotech.

Focus: Attendees will explore how succession planning can work within time-crunched clinical labs and learn how to evaluate current team members’ competencies as part of an assessment of potential future leaders.

“The Essentials of Clinical Lab Ops Management”

Presenter: Thad Gurley, MS, assistant director of the accessioning unit and biorepository at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.

Focus: Leaders will walk through foundational practices for clinical labs, including strategies for purchasing, best practices for equipment maintenance, and decision-making that enhances lab efficiency and productivity.

“Clinical Lab Roundtable: ‘Uh Oh, Inspectors Just Showed Up’”

Presenter: Scott Wallask, senior editorial manager at Today’s Clinical Lab and Lab Manager.

Focus: This roundtable will draw on the experiences of participants who are either preparing for, or have lived through, an unannounced inspection, with emphasis on ensuring a professional demeanor from lab staff during a stressful situation.

Patient safety workshop is also available

For the first time, the Lab Manager Leadership Summit clinical lab track will also offer an add-on workshop: “Field-Tested Strategies to Ensure Patient Safety and Operational Efficiency.”

Led by Angela Lauster, MBA, DLM(ASCP), MT(AMT), senior administrative laboratory director at Tampa General Hospital, the workshop will engage the group on how patient safety efforts must work in tandem with workflow efficiency.

Lauster will conduct breakout sessions that allow participants to uncover patient safety concerns and match them with successful operational tactics designed to avoid the problems.

Benefits of attending the Lab Manager Leadership Summit

The clinical laboratory track at the Lab Manager Leadership Summit offers attendees some key advantages to larger trade shows, including:

• A chance to hear from experts and meet with peers in an intimate setting.
• More time for learning and networking—and less rushing around—as lab leaders will not need to trek long distances between meeting rooms and exhibit halls.
• Delegates of the clinical track can also attend any other sessions during the event.

We look forward to seeing many of you in Pittsburgh.