Thanks Scott,
I'd be totally fine with the old manual test but we are a small rural hospital and the night tech is alone after midnight and if he/she is in the ER or on the floor when the hour is up it would have to be remixed and the process started over again thus making the ER Dr. upset. I realize ESR is not an emergency room test but someone forgot to inform the ER Dr.s about this fact. We also do CRP's but if "our" ER Drs order a CRP they seem to want the ESR as well. In the 23 years I've been at this place, we've never had a backup for ESR and haven't ever had a need. I suppose in the event that our analyzer was down, we would just send the sample to our reference lab. If administration approves the purchase we have decided to go with the Streck mini cube. If they don't I'm going to talk to our pathologist about discontinuing the test all together.