Since 1995, Reliable Business Intelligence for Clinical Laboratories, Pathology Groups and Laboratory Diagnostics

January 2009

Primum non nocere, or: First, Do No Harm!

“FIRST, DO NO HARM!” IS KNOWN TO EVERY HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL. However, I was surprised to learn that this famous phrase is not from the Hippocratic Oath! In checking wikipedia.com as I wrote the headline above, I learned that “the phrase expresses one of the principal precepts all medical students are taught in medical school and …

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Inaccurate Results + Quest Dominates News Cycle

CEO SUMMARY: Most laboratory professionals don’t know it yet, but significant changes occurred to the entire lab industry last week. After Quest Diagnostics Incorporated acknowledged that it was retesting tens of thousands of patients because 7% of the Vitamin D results it reported during an 18-month period were inaccurate, a blitz of newspaper headlines and …

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Labs Need to Respond To Inaccurate Results

CEO SUMMARY: What does a lab do when it discovers that it has reported inaccurate test results? In 2004, a turnaround team arrived at the laboratory of Maryland General Hospital in Baltimore to deal with the consequences of a failed infectious disease testing program. For about two years, the lab had reported inaccurate HCV and …

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Dennis Monahan of ARUP Dies on Christmas Eve

HE HAD A CAREER THAT SPANNED the birth of the esoteric/reference testing industry and its evolution into a major source of advanced diagnostic services to the nation’s hospitals and commercial laboratory companies. Dennis Patrick Monahan was Vice President for National Contracts at ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City, Utah. Colleagues and friends were stunned at …

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Lab Conserves Blood When Drawing Patients

CEO SUMMARY: New attention on both the risks associated with blood transfusions and the cost of blood products is triggering action by the nation’s hospitals. At the 719-bed Rhode Island Hospital, the laboratory is on the front line of the hospital’s blood management initiative. One change in long-standing practices is to encourage phlebotomists to draw …

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ASCP Awarded PEPFAR II Funds for Lab Assistance

CEO SUMMARY: With new Congressional authorization and funding of $48 billion, PEPFAR II—a second five-year initiative to help targeted countries battle HIV, AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria—is about to get under way. To better support diagnosis and management of HIV/AIDs patients, some PEPFAR funds are designated to expand laboratory testing services in countries with high prevalence …

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January 12, 2009 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Here’s an interesting quirk. It seems none of the major lab professional associations and societies have yet to alert their members to last week’s national news about inaccurate Vitamin D test results at Quest Diagnostics Incorporated. At least, that was true today, based on visits to their Web sites before this issue of THE DARK REPORT …

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