Goodbye MTs & CLSs, Hello MLS (ASCP)!

For a number of years, there have been a several of different certifications for medical laboratory professionals. Depending on whether you were a clinical laboratory scientist or a medical technologist, you may either have a certification of MT or CLS. These certifications were managed by two different credentialing agencies: the American Society for Clinical Pathology Board of Registry (BOR) and the National Credentialing Agency for Laboratory Personnel (NCA).

Complicated? You bet! Having two credentialing agencies created competition and division, and certainly must have been a challenge to both entry level professionals and the labs that hire them to determine which certification was needed, required, and ensured best practices.

However, hope is on the horizon. Recently the ASCP and NCA announced the creation of a single credentialing agency, effective October 23, 2009. The NCA will be dissolved and the new, consolidated credentialing entity will be called the ASCP Board of Certification (BOC). Medical Technologists and Clinical Laboratory Scientists will credentialed as Medical Laboratory Scientists (MLS), and the ?óÔé¼?£ASCP?óÔé¼Ôäó suffix will be attached to all BOC certifications. Medical Laboratory Technicians and Clinical Laboratory Technicians will be unified as Medical Laboratory Technicians (MLT).

For more information on these upcoming changes check out this article from the Dark Daily, a site for clinical pathology news and trends. Detailed information on the unification process can be obtained from this NCA presentation.