The Hummingbird's Nest

December 8, 2025

Why Colorado Clinics Are Turning to Mobile Phlebotomy Support

Colorado’s healthcare landscape is changing — quickly. Clinics across the state are experiencing pressure from every direction: rising patient demand, increasing administrative load, and widespread staffing shortages that affect both clinical quality and day-to-day operations.

Mobile phlebotomy support has emerged as a lifeline for physicians, specialty practices, and care facilities seeking to maintain efficiency, improve patient experience, and prevent staff burnout. At ABOLabs, we’ve seen firsthand how supplemental phlebotomy support allows clinics to function smoothly despite the challenges of today’s healthcare workforce crisis.

Here’s why more Colorado clinics are choosing mobile phlebotomy support — and why it’s becoming essential, not optional.

Colorado Clinics Are Overwhelmed — and Staffing Shortages Are Getting Worse

Colorado is facing one of the most severe clinical staffing shortages in the country, and the numbers are staggering. A recent statewide analysis predicts the state will be short 10,000 registered nurses and 54,000 allied-health professionals (including medical assistants and nursing assistants) by 2026.
(Source: ColoradoBiz)

That means fewer skilled personnel available for clinics — especially for tasks like phlebotomy that require training, consistency, and time.

The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence’s 2023 Workforce Snapshot warns that a large portion of the state’s nursing workforce is already nearing retirement age. The pipeline of new healthcare workers is not keeping pace with the outflow, creating a widening gap in the workforce.

Rural and non-urban areas are hit hardest. Colorado Newsline reports nearly a 20% shortage in home-health and direct-care workers across rural counties — meaning basic services like blood draws become more difficult to access for mobility-impaired or homebound patients.

These realities leave clinics:

short-staffed
overburdened
unable to hire qualified candidates
forced to stretch existing staff thin

Mobile phlebotomy supplements these gaps without adding the overhead, responsibility, or risk of hiring new staff in an environment where qualified workers are scarce.

A Better Experience for Patients — With Higher Satisfaction for Clinics

Patients today value convenience, speed, and accessibility — and they feel the impact when clinics are understaffed. Long waits, delayed blood draws, or inconsistent workflow all diminish the patient experience.

Mobile phlebotomy directly improves:

appointment flow
wait times
nursing workload
patient satisfaction
follow-through on lab orders

For homebound, elderly, memory-care, and mobility-impaired patients — especially in rural areas facing a 20% workforce shortage — mobile phlebotomy is not just convenient; it’s essential.

When clinics partner with ABOLabs as their mobile phlebotomy provider, patients feel supported and physicians experience fewer delays, helping to create a more modern, patient-centered practice.

Streamlined Workflow = Better Efficiency for Providers

Under-staffing disrupts workflow at every level. Nurses and MAs are often pulled away from essential clinical tasks to perform blood draws because “there’s simply no one else available.”

But research shows that under-staffing isn’t just inefficient — it’s unsafe.

Peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that:

low nurse staffing increases patient mortality
frequent use of temporary/agency staff increases risk of adverse outcomes
rationing care leads to more infections, errors, and re-admissions

(Sources: JAMA Network Open, International Journal of Critical Care, PMC6868706, PMC10787575)

While phlebotomy may seem like a small task in the clinical workflow, it is a time-consuming and skill-dependent step that cannot be rushed without compromising quality.

Outsourcing blood draws helps stabilize workflow by:

removing bottlenecks before physician visits
reducing time spent on specialty lab handling
improving compliance on standing orders
allowing MAs and nurses to focus on clinical care

This creates a smoother, more predictable schedule for both providers and patients.

Mobile Phlebotomy Improves Lab Completion Rates & Reduces No-Shows

Completion rates on lab orders plummet when patients face:

transportation issues
mobility challenges
long in-clinic wait times
no available staff to draw blood
inflexible schedules

Mobile phlebotomy eliminates these barriers. Patients complete their tests on time, at home, or at work, without juggling childcare, navigating winter roads, or waiting for clinic availability.

This leads to:

higher lab compliance
improved chronic-care management
more reliable monitoring for hormone, thyroid, diabetes, lipid, and specialty labs
better follow-up care and outcomes

For clinics treating chronic conditions, improved lab compliance directly boosts treatment quality and physician decision-making.

Cost-Effective Support Without Increasing Overhead

Given the projected shortfall of 10,000 nurses and 54,000 allied-health workers, hiring an in-house phlebotomist may not be feasible for many practices — financially or logistically.

Hiring full-time staff brings:

salary + benefits
HR management
scheduling & PTO coverage
training & turnover costs
competition with other clinics for scarce candidates

In contrast, mobile phlebotomy offers:

predictable, transparent pricing
“only when needed” usage
no onboarding or benefits
no risk of hiring into an unstable labor market
scalability during peak seasons

Clinics pay only for what they need — without competing in Colorado’s tight labor market or risking staff burnout.

Not Just a Colorado Problem — A National Trend

Colorado mirrors a national crisis. The HRSA State of the U.S. Health Workforce Report highlights critical shortages of nurses, MAs, and allied-health workers across the United States.

The takeaway?

Staffing shortages aren’t temporary — they’re structural.

Mobile phlebotomy is part of the long-term solution, helping clinics maintain quality care even as traditional staffing models become increasingly strained.