Taking the question as asked, rather than the general version of it. A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin and B12, and a full blood count. That set catches the things that change, the things that explain symptoms, and the things that alter the prescribing decision. Almost everything else on the long circulating lists is either invariant, uninterpretable without a specific question, or an incidental finding waiting to cause an unnecessary workup.

SarahChen_PharmD said:

A defensible baseline is short: HbA1c and fasting glucose, a lipid panel with ApoB if you can get it, ALT and AST, creatinine with eGFR, TSH, ferritin…

Agreeing with SarahChen_PharmD, and the qualification matters more than the agreement. One addition: if the lab changes analytical platform between your draws, the comparison breaks and nobody tells you. It is worth asking when a value moves inexplicably.

steve_okc said:

My prescriber ordered three tests and this board recommends about twenty, and I would like to know which of those two lists is right.

Same position here, arrived at the long way round. The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value. One out-of-range result in isolation generates anxiety and unnecessary tests; the same result next to the trend and the rest of the panel usually generates a shrug.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly.

Blood work came back perfect. baseline bloodwork + this community = winning. 🏆