Long time Medical Director of the Laboratory at CVMC, Dr. Brian Travis, has “passed the torch” to his colleague, Dr. Cathy Palmer, who has been named the lab’s new Medical Director. Dr. Palmer received her MD/PhD degree from Indiana University and went on to complete an Internship and Residency in Pathology at the University of California San Diego Medical Center. She came to Vermont to pursue a Clinical Fellowship in Cytopathology at Fletcher Allen Health Care and subsequently was a Research Fellow in Environmental Pathology at UVM. Dr. Palmer is certified by the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, with subspecialty certification in Cytopathology.
“One of my key roles as Medical Director is to facilitate communication between the laboratory and the clinicians who rely on us, both in the hospital and in community-based practices.” said Dr. Palmer. “All of us in the lab work very hard to provide our clinicians the test results they need as quickly and accurately as possible, so that they can provide the best possible care to their patients.”
The CVMC lab offers a broad menu of tests in many different areas, including hematology, chemistry, serology, microbiology, and blood banking. A newly purchased state-of-the-art instrument allows the lab to perform more tests in-house that previously were sent to outside reference labs. That means faster turn-around times, and clinicians get test results sooner. Within the next few months, new molecular diagnostic testing will be brought into the lab.
Another important aspect of the CVMC laboratory is the Surgical Pathology service, which provides diagnoses of surgical specimens obtained in the OR as well as tissue biopsies, pap tests - and more - from the various medical practices. Dr. Travis and Dr. Palmer support CVMC’s surgeons by offering intra-operative evaluation of specimens by frozen section microscopy. They also collaborate with CVMC’s radiologists on CT- guided or ultrasound-guided aspiration biopsies of lung, liver, lymph node and thyroid. Aspiration biopsy is a relatively non-invasive outpatient procedure that, in many cases, can provide same day diagnosis.