Mar 16, 2012 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Managed Care Contracts & Payer Reimbursement, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily
Don’t wait another day to register for the 17th Annual Executive War College on Lab and Pathology Management, because today, March 16th, is the last day you can save $100 on your early bird registration. And with seats filling up fast, you risk missing the opportunity to hear more than 80 leading experts on the new financial stresses that clinical labs and pathology groups can expect in 2012.
This information-packed two-day event includes a full range of laboratory management and operational innovations plus strategies for improved profitability. Get a complete list of the topics and speakers we’ve already confirmed. Then take advantage of our early-bird discount (which ends today) and register now. (more…)
Dec 20, 2011 | Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Recent reports show why labs need more robust laboratory information systems (LIS), including a shrinking workforce, new requirements to connect to EMRs in hospitals and physicians’ offices, and the development of health information exchanges.
Clinical laboratories nationwide are realizing they need new and more powerful laboratory information systems (LIS) as they seek to process larger volumes of medical laboratory tests with a shrinking number of medical technologists and clinical laboratory scientists.
In response to the critical shortages of MTs, CLSs, and other laboratory scientists, most clinical laboratories are beefing up automation in all areas of the lab. From the high-volume core chemistry/hematology laboratory to microbiology and histology, laboratory automation systems are becoming ubiquitous. But all this lab automation increases the need to use information technologies to manage both automation and the flow of specimens through the laboratory.
A report published earlier this year by Kalorama Information of Rockville, Maryland, actually links the shortage of skilled medical laboratory staff as one of the most important factors in fostering growth in the LIS market. Researchers estimated the size of the LIS market at $800 million and predicted that it would grow about 6% annually for the next few years.
As pathologists and clinical laboratory managers know, labor accounts for more than 60% of the cost of producing medical laboratory test results. The Kalorama report stated that laboratory automation and better information management systems can reduce the number of manual procedures and tasks in the typical medical laboratory, In turn, this helps optimize labor efficiency, said the report titled, Laboratory Information Systems (LIS / LIMS) Markets. (more…)
May 11, 2011 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Uncategorized
CIOs across America are concerned that their hospitals might not make the 2015 meaningful use deadline
For all the excitement about hospital and physician adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems, many CIOs of the nation’s leading health systems and hospitals are pessimistic about their organization’s ability to meet “meaningful use” (MU) requirements by the year 2015.
This is probably not news to most pathologists and clinical laboratory managers working in hospital laboratories. Generally, members of their medical laboratory team are usually part of every hospital’s EHR implementation task force, since clinical laboratory test data makes up a significant portion of the typical patient health record.
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Jul 10, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
List of recommendations based on UnitedHealth’s extensive database and experience
Every sector of the healthcare industry is offering both Congress and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) advice on how to reform the system to improve quality of care, while reducing costs. Too often, the search for ways to save money that can be redirected to covering uninsured is a game of taking money from one existing health service and shifting it to another.
Recently UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) stepped into this debate over how to save money. In important ways, it is better positioned to provide this advice than most other entities. For example, UnitedHealth Group is the nation’s largest insurer in terms of revenue. UNH funds and organizes care for 70 million Americans. It arranges $115 billion in health care services provided by 5,000 hospitals and 650,000 physicians nationwide. Because of this, UNH’s Center for Modernization and Reform has collected more data on clinical services provided and resulting healthcare outcomes than anyone else.
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Feb 5, 2007 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
In a growing number of cities around the United States, efforts are under way to organize a regional health information repository. Such a development has implications to change the long-standing relationships laboratories have with physicians, hospitals, patients, and payers.
Two acronyms are used to describe these regional informatics projects. One is RHIO, which stands for Regional Health Information Network. The other is HIE, which stands for Healthcare Information Exchange. Because of the potential for these organizations to change the way laboratories relate to the communities they serve, lab managers and pathologists may want to check out a report issued in recent months by the American Health Information and Management Association (AHIMA) detailing the Development of State-Level Health Information Exchange Initiatives (HIEs). The purpose of the report was “to gather information from existing state-level HIE initiatives to determine successful governance and legal, financial, and operational characteristics; to develop consensus on guidance for developing state-level HIE initiatives; and to disseminate these findings widely” (from the executive summary).
According to AHIMA, HIEs existing in 27 states and over 200 localities. Two key findings of AHIMA’s report were that most state-level HIE initiatives are still in an early stage of development and the mature ones are faced with challenges on how to expand their services in a financially sustainable way. One major problem in getting HIEs to align their form and function is that they have come into existence in a variety of ways and for varying purposes. Some have been founded in response to state legislation. Others were initiated by either the efforts of state agencies or through collective grass roots work by community healthcare stakeholders. AHIMA can find only eight states with an HIE that is more than two years old.
Funding seems to be a big impediment in HIE development and expansion. Some suggestions for financing include charging membership fees, transaction fees, fees for a software package, program or service fees, or some combination of such fees. Beyond financing, HIEs face problems that range from no consensus on the role of state government and lack of coordination among state agencies to minimal participation from private payers and inadequate plans for relating to similar HIE efforts in neighboring states.
Doctors, hospitals, and laboratories are each expected to benefit from the ability to transfer patient information seamlessly across city and state lines, but they must be prepared to pay for this convenience. Dark Daily predicts that, in order to successfully implement HIEs on a state-to-state basis, doctors, hospitals, and laboratories, can expect to pay, at the very least, a membership fee to get the ball rolling. Only time will determine whether HIEs and RHIOs will turn out to be either threats or opportunities for laboratories.
