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. Samples for any department can be delivered to CSR between 8am and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday.

Samples must be sent to KingsPath according to our packaging requirements and King's transport or Royal Mail transport requirements, as appropriate.

If you have any queries, contact us.

Hours of business

Lab technicians working on pc
Weekdays
Full laboratory service, 9am – 5pm
Weekend opening
On Saturdays Clinical Biochemistry, Haematology (including Blood Transfusion) and Medical Microbiology are open to deal with essential work only. All specimens must reach the laboratory before 10.30am to 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

All KingsPath departments are accredited with Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA UK) Ltd, an internationally recognised accreditation scheme for diagnostic clinical laboratories.

Each department undergoes regular assessments with CPA to demonstrate that the quality system in place provides a service that meets recognised quality standards.

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 complete our online comments form if you have any compliments, complaints or questions.

If you would like to meet with members of the Pathology team to discuss any aspects of the service, please contact the Head of Pathology Operations and Strategy or Quality Manager.