Apr 7, 2014 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily
Variability in how tissue is handled from one histopathology laboratory to another greatly affects quality of specimen and accuracy of the pathologist’s diagnosis
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA—Here on the shores of Lake Ontario, pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals gathered last week for a unique conference that focused on quality issues involving how tissue is handled from collection and transport to the histopathology laboratory processing to diagnosis by surgical pathologists.
Your Dark Daily editor was here to participate in the conference and learn from a first-rank panel of speakers. As many long-time readers know, patients, physicians, and health insurers expect increasingly higher levels of accuracy in how lab specimens are handled and greater precision in the resulting diagnosis that is produced by pathologists. Thus, a conference dedicated to tissue specimen integrity and quality is both timely and appropriate. (more…)
Jan 31, 2014 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily
Nation’s healthcare system is in the midst of major clinical, organizational, and financial reforms—many of which require immediate responses by pathology laboratories
BIRMINGHAM, England—Two major challenges in laboratory medicine were front and center this week when medical laboratory, a professionals and histopathologists gathered here in the United Kingdom (UK) for the eleventh annual Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine (FiLM).
One challenge is how to improve the quality of lab testing services and demonstrate value to payers. The other challenge is how medical laboratories in the UK can cope with shrinking budgets for medical laboratories. (more…)
Jan 9, 2013 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily
Pathologists and medical laboratory managers will take up these issues at the upcoming Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine Conference in Birmingham, England on January 29-30, 2013
Medical laboratory testing in the United Kingdom is experiencing change at an accelerating rate. These changes reflect ongoing reforms within the National Health System (NHS), which is itself dealing with increased demand for healthcare services in the face of limited budgets.
That means providers in the United Kingdom—including pathology laboratories—are being asked to deliver more clinical services even as budgets are held constant or even reduced. There are also calls for all providers of clinical services to become more innovative in ways that improve the quality of patient services while reducing the overall cost of care. (more…)
Jun 15, 2012 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Hospital’s purchase of an “enterprise-wide solution” to be the EMR and related ancillary system software often leaves the hospital lab without the full LIS functions found in best-of-breed LIS products
DATELINE—PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, Part II: Adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems by hospitals and health systems throughout this country may now be the single most disruptive factor in how hospital labs configure their laboratory information systems (LIS) specifically in support of their parent institutions’ informatics requirements.
This issue surfaced repeatedly during presentations made here on Friday, June 8, at the Strategic Summit organized by the Association for Pathology Informatics (API). In simplest terms, a growing number of hospital and health system administrators want to purchase and deploy a single “enterprise-wide solution” (EWS) for their EMR and total informatics needs. (more…)
Jun 5, 2012 | Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing
More consolidation in the clinical laboratory and pathology testing industry
It was announced yesterday that MEDTOX Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTOX), of New Brighton, Minnesota, will be acquired by Laboratory Corporation of America (NYSE:LH) of Burlington, North Carolina. The purchase price is approximately $241 million and represents a 37% premium over Medtox’s closing price of $19.70 on Friday, June 1.
Significantly, LabCorp’s purchase of MEDTOX removes one more independent laboratory company from the market. This continues the trend of medical laboratory consolidation that has marked the lab testing industry for the past 25 years. (more…)
