Even US military clinical laboratories strive to cut costs, protect quality, and improve outcomes
Defense Health Agency (DHA), a part of the federal Department of Defense (DOD), recently launched a plan to consolidate healthcare facilities within certain geographical regions and to unify and integrate the military’s clinical laboratory operations in those areas. The goal is to streamline efficiencies and lower costs while maintaining quality lab testing services.
The DOD operates a nationwide network of medical treatment facilities (MTFs) that include state-of-the-art clinical and anatomic pathology laboratories serving military personnel and their families. These military labs face the same issues of cost, efficiency, and outcomes as do civilian clinical laboratories throughout the United States.
To address those challenges and bring together clinical laboratory services in specific regions, the DHA established the Tidewater Market in April of 2021 to serve select US Air Force, Army, and Navy MTFs in the Washington DC metro area, central North Carolina, Jacksonville, and coastal Mississippi.
Tidewater is the fifth Military Health System (MHS) market created to manage MTFs as they transition into the DHA.
Health.mil—a website maintained by the MHS as an informational resource for those it serves—describes the MHS as “one of America’s largest and most complex healthcare institutions, and the world’s preeminent military healthcare delivery operation.
“Our MHS saves lives on the battlefield, combats infectious disease around the world, and is responsible for providing health services through both direct care [at military hospitals and clinics known as ‘military treatment facilities’] and private sector care to approximately 9.6 million beneficiaries, composed of uniformed service members, military retirees, and family members,” Health.mil notes.
With 9.6 million beneficiaries, MHS is one of the largest healthcare service organizations operating in the United States.
“The establishment of this market provides a true opportunity to optimize healthcare for our beneficiaries by focusing on outcomes and access across the Tidewater market,” said Navy Rear Admiral Darin Via, MD, Tidewater market manager, in an MHS/DHA news release. “It also allows us to work towards standardization of processes, creating an easier environment for our patients to navigate within.” (Photo copyright: US Navy.)
Finding Efficiencies, Optimizing Clinical Laboratory Processes and Services
In an article outlining the Tidewater Market clinical laboratory initiative, Health.mil noted that “A market is a group of MTFs in one geographic area working together with its TRICARE partners, Veterans Affairs hospitals, other federal healthcare organizations, private sector teaching hospitals and medical universities, as well as other healthcare partners. Markets operate as a system to support the sharing of patients, staff, budget, and other functions across facilities to improve readiness and the delivery and coordination of health services.”
The Tidewater Market provides integrated, affordable, high-quality healthcare services to active-duty service members, military retirees, reservists and national guardsmen, and their families. The market currently serves more than 390,000 beneficiaries.
In 2022, the Tidewater Market Laboratory/Pathology Integration Working Group was created to optimize services while reducing costs within the market. The group was created by US Navy Captain Stacie Milavec, who has more than 23 years of experience in military medicine.
“One of DHA’s goals with setting up a market structure is to find efficiencies and optimize and standardize processes and services wherever possible,” Milavec said in an MHS/DHA news release. “We’ve been able to do exactly that by collaborating within our working group.”
Resource Sharing between Military Clinical Laboratories
The MTFs that are geographically close to each other helped expedite turnaround times for testing results. By working together, they saved the Tidewater Market an estimated $80,000 during fiscal year 2022.
One of the methods they used to streamline testing and lower costs was to allow resource sharing between facilities within the market. For example, the full-service clinical laboratory located at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) began performing head and neck pathology cases, breast biopsies, and PAP testing for some of the other facilities within the Tidewater Market. These services were previously performed by other means and in some cases were sent to commercially-contracted clinical laboratories for analysis at a high cost.
The NMCP also took on Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) testing for all MTFs within the market.
In February of 2023, NMCP began taking on additional clinical chemistry tests from the 633rd Medical Group at Joint Base Langley-Eustis located in Hampton, Virginia. Prior to that collaboration, those tests were sent out to contracted labs off-base for analysis.
“[Through collaboration between the MTFs] we’ve been able to successfully transition civilian marketplace send-out testing back into the military market by utilizing market resources,” said pathologist US Air Force Captain Dianna Chormanski, MD, Laboratory Medical Director with the 633rd Medical Group at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, in the press release. “I’m a big fan of cooperation and working together, and that’s what a market should be.”
The DHA established the market-based structure as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017. It’s an example of regional laboratory consolidation within one region of the US where a common effort brought together clinical laboratories operating on military bases of different services. The military’s goal was a unified, integrated medical laboratory operation that could deliver targeted cost savings while maintaining quality lab testing services. It appears to be successful.
CAP president maintains medical laboratory staff are ‘indispensable’ in pandemic fight and should be in ‘top tier’ for vaccination
As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to roll out, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) is lobbying for clinical pathologists and medical laboratory staff to be moved up the priority list for vaccinations, stating they are “indispensable” in the pandemic fight.
In a news release, CAP’s President Patrick Godbey, MD, FCAP argued for the early vaccination of laboratory workers, “It is essential that early access to the vaccine be provided to all pathologists and laboratory personnel,” he said. “Pathologists have led throughout this pandemic by bringing tests for the coronavirus online in communities across the country and we must ensure that patient access to testing continues. We must also serve as a resource to discuss the facts about the vaccine and answer questions patients, family members, and friends have about why they should get the vaccine when it is available to them.”
In a phone call following a virtual press conference, pathologists and CAP President Patrick Godbey, MD (above), told MedPage Today that even if medical laboratory staff are not directly in contact with patients, they should be considered “top tier” (designated as Phase 1a) for getting the vaccine. “I think they [clinical laboratory workers] should be considered in the same tier as nurses,” said Godbey, who also is Laboratory Director at Southeastern Pathology Associates and Southeast Georgia Health System in Brunswick, Ga. “They’re indispensable. Without them, there’d be no one to run the tests.” (Photo copyright: Southeast Georgia Health System.)
Who Does CDC Think Should Be First to Be Vaccinated?
According toThe New York Times (NYT), there are an estimated 21 million healthcare workers in the United States, making it basically “impossible,” the NYT wrote, for them all to get vaccinated in the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations.
A December 11, 2020, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, titled, “ACIP Interim Recommendation for Allocating Initial Supplies of COVID-19 Vaccine—United States, 2020,” notes that “The [federal] Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended, as interim guidance, that both 1) healthcare personnel and 2) residents of long-term care facilities be offered COVID-19 vaccine in the initial phase of the vaccination program.”
The ACIP report defines healthcare personnel as “paid and unpaid persons serving in healthcare settings who have the potential for direct or indirect exposure to patients or infectious materials.”
However, a CDC terminology guidance document listed at the bottom of the ACIP report states, “For this update, HCP [Healthcare Personnel] does not include dental healthcare personnel, autopsy personnel, and laboratory personnel, as recommendations to address occupational infection prevention and control (IPC) services for these personnel are posted elsewhere.”
In part, the letter stated, “We are convinced that ACIP did not intend to exclude any healthcare workers from its recommendation to offer vaccinations to healthcare personnel in the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination program (Phase 1a). However, we would hate for jurisdictions to overlook dental, autopsy, and laboratory personnel because of a minor footnote in [CDC] guidance that was developed for an entirely different purpose (i.e., infection control).
“We respectfully ask CDC to clarify,” the letter continues, “… that all healthcare workers—including dental, autopsy, and laboratory personnel—are among those who should be given priority access to vaccine during the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination program.”
“In the laboratory, they are encountering and handling thousands of samples that have active live virus in them,” said Karger, who called clinical laboratory staff and phlebotomists the “forgotten” frontline healthcare workers. “We’re getting 10,000 samples a day. That’s a lot of handling of infectious specimens, and we do want [staff] to be prioritized for vaccination.”
Karger continued to stress the vital role clinical laboratories play not only in COVID-19 testing but also in the functioning of the overall health system. She added that staff burnout is a concern since laboratory staff have been working “full throttle” since March.
“From an operational standpoint, we do need to keep our lab up and running,” she said. “We don’t want to have staff out such that we would have to decrease our testing capacity, which would have widespread impacts for our health system and state.”
Testing for Post-Vaccine Immunity
The CAP panelists also highlighted the need to prepare for the aftermath of widespread COVID-19 vaccinations—the need to test for post-vaccine immunity.
“It’s not routine practice to check antibody levels after getting a vaccine but given the heightened interest in COVID testing, we are anticipating there is going to be some increased in demand for post-vaccine antibody testing,” Karger said. “We’re at least preparing for that and preparing to educate our providers.”
Karger pointed out that clinical pathologists will play an important role in educating providers about the type of antibody tests necessary to test for COVID-19 immunity, because, she says, only the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antibody test will check for an immune response.
With the pandemic expected to stretch far into 2021, clinical laboratories will continue to play a crucial role in the nation’s healthcare response to COVID-19. As essential workers in the fight against infectious disease, clinical pathologists, clinical chemists, and all medical laboratory staff should be prioritized as frontline healthcare workers.
