Dec 23, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Researchers find shopping for medical laboratory tests increased by nearly 50%, and people are saving more than a million dollars annually by shopping for blood tests
Each year, more consumers use online healthcare price-shopping tools to find hospitals, physicians, and clinical laboratories that have the lowest prices. And medical laboratory tests is among the top services on their lists!
Researchers at Vitals of Lyndhurst, NJ, a company that publishes online physician ratings, analyzed how consumers were using its price and quality transparency tools. They confirmed that shopping for medical laboratory tests/blood work is one of the top healthcare procedures checked by consumers.
According to a recent Vitals press release, approximately 46% more people shopped for blood tests in 2015 than the year before, and they saved $1,149,682 by doing so. That’s because their health plans reward them for selecting good quality and low-price providers, as well as adopting healthy behaviors, such as losing weight, exercising more, and lowering high cholesterol scores. (more…)
Dec 16, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Accountable Care Act has reduced the number of uninsured, but has failed to deliver lower costs for most Americans or employers
More big increases are coming to Obamacare premiums during 2017. This is an important development and, depending on how the new Congress decides to address problems with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the consequences can be either positive or negative for clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.
Large increases in healthcare premiums can have a trickle-down effect on clinical laboratories and pathology groups since health insurers tend to reduce reimbursements to providers when they are in a financial squeeze. And while the November election puts the future of the ACA in doubt, a recently released Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study adds further evidence that Obamacare (colloquial for the ACA) has fallen short of its goal of reining in healthcare costs while simultaneously expanding healthcare coverage to millions of Americans.
The KFF study shows premiums in the ACA’s Health Insurance Marketplace will continue to increase in many regions in 2017. Researchers blame the higher price in part to the phasing out of the ACA’s reinsurance program and the unexpected losses many participating insurers have experienced. (more…)
Dec 14, 2016 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Because of ongoing advances in gene sequencing and the data analytics needed to interpret that information, new approaches to clinical care are becoming available to physicians and pathologists
COLD SPRING HARBOR, NEW YORK—Internationally-recognized as a leader in bringing together the brightest minds in genetics, the Banbury Center at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) produced a three-day conference here last week to explore the future state of anatomic pathology and identify opportunities in genetic medicine and image sciences that play to the strengths of the nation’s pathology laboratories.
“Evolution and Revolution in Anatomic Pathology: Automation, Machine-Assisted Diagnostics, Molecular Prognostics, and Theranostics” was the title, and the meeting’s organizers were CSHL and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Northwell Health.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Founded in 1890
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has a long history and an enviable reputation. It was founded in 1890 to train teachers in biology. However, by 1904, the laboratory’s mission had been expanded to include research in genetics. In 1924, the research mission was further enlarged to include quantitative biology—in particular, physiology and biophysics.
It was in 1968 that Nobel laureate James Watson, then a professor at Harvard University, accepted the directorship of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while also keeping his professorship at Harvard University. Watson served at some level of leadership until 2008, when he became Chancellor Emeritus. Currently CSHL laboratory houses about 200 research-related personnel. (more…)
Dec 12, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
All hospital labs need to understand the negative financial impact to their labs and have a plan to absorb the fee cuts and remain clinically and financially viable
If you believe some experts, in just 13 months many of the nation’s hospital medical laboratory outreach programs will experience a financial disaster that could put them out of business and reduce Medicare patients’ access to lab testing services. This event happens on January 1, 2018, when Medicare officials implement substantial cuts to the Part B Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS).
These fee cuts are the result of the section of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) that requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to collect private-payer lab test price data from the nation’s medical laboratories and use that data to establish fees for the CLFS. CMS officials estimate that the fee cuts will reduce payments to labs by as much as $400 million in 2018.
What puts the laboratory outreach programs of the nation’s hospitals and health systems at significant financial risk is the fact that CMS, as verified by reports issued by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), intends to reduce fees on the 25 highest-volume highly-automated lab tests that make up 59% of what Medicare spent on clinical laboratory tests in 2014.
Stated differently, the OIG says that, in 2014, Medicare paid a total of $7 billion for clinical laboratory tests. Of this total, the Medicare program paid $4.1 billion for the top 25 tests. In a report issued in September, the OIG wrote, “Changes in the Medicare payment rates for these 25 tests could have a significant impact on overall Medicare spending for lab tests when the new payment system for lab tests goes into effect in 2018.” [Italics by Dark Daily.] (more…)
Dec 7, 2016 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Uncategorized
Big data offers new opportunities for healthcare providers, clinical laboratories, and pathology groups, and this new alliance hopes to accelerate big data capabilities
Big data has the potential to deliver unprecedented insight into optimizing the patient care experience and managing outcomes for healthcare providers. That is particularly true for clinical laboratories, and pathology groups. Yet, with the sheer amount of data generated by today’s ever-expanding menus of diagnostic procedures, communicating this data between systems and analyzing data at high-levels still presents challenges.
To help healthcare organizations jumpstart their Big Data programs, key stakeholders are joining forces. One such alliance involves Siemens Healthineers and IBM Watson Health. In an October 2016 press release, the two organizations announced a five-year global strategic alliance aimed at helping healthcare professionals optimize value-based care that leverages increasingly complex data collected for use in precision medicine.
What should intrigue pathologists and medical laboratory managers about this new alliance is the fact that Siemens Healthineers owns two of the world’s largest businesses in radiology/imaging and in vitro (IVD). Thus, it can be expected that the alliance will be looking to identify ways to combine radiology data with clinical laboratory data that produce knowledge that can be applied to clinical care. (more…)
Dec 5, 2016 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations
Last week involved a full slate of pathology meetings and medical laboratory site visits on both islands of New Zealand during Dark Daily’s visit to this Pacific nation
DATELINE: CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND—There’s a good case to be made that the health system in this South Pacific nation is farther down the path of medical laboratory regionalization and consolidation than most other developed nations.
That’s one insight to be gleaned from a week’s worth of meetings with pathologists, clinical laboratory professionals, and health system administrators in the cities of Auckland on the North Island and Christchurch on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Your Dark Daily Editor, Robert Michel, had the opportunity to speak at several conferences and workshops, along with visits to medical laboratories.
A note of explanation about nomenclature will be helpful to Dark Daily’s international readers. In Australia and New Zealand, “pathology laboratory” is the common term for the medical laboratories that typically test blood, urine, saliva, and similar specimens. (In the United States and Canada, “clinical laboratory” is used interchangeably with medical laboratory.) “Histopathology” (or anatomic pathology) is the common term for labs that handle tissue specimens in New Zealand and Australia. (In North America, anatomic pathology, or surgical pathology laboratory is used more frequently than histopathology.) (more…)
