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

June 2014

Survival Essentials for Local Labs

Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark / R. Lewis Dark

IF THERE IS ANY SINGLE SIGN OF TOUGH TIMES FOR LOCAL LABS, it is decreasing access to patients due to the exclusionary contracting tactic of health insurers. That tactic is the subject of our lead story. Unhappy with this tactic, a number of lab administrators and lab management consultants are starting to say: “I’m as […]

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Excluding Lab Competitors Helps Big Labs Grab Greater Market Share

Clinical Laboratory Trends / Joseph Burns

CEO SUMMARY: Changes in healthcare are motivating health insurers and the nation’s largest lab testing companies to enter into contracts in which the large lab company lowers its lab test prices to the payer in return for having the payer exclude that lab company’s toughest competitors from the payer’s provider network. A number of lab

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Aurora Diagnostics Acquires Two Pathology Group Practices

Anatomic Pathology / Joseph Burns

TWO MORE PATHOLOGY GROUPS gave up their independence in recent weeks. Both groups were acquired byAurora Diagnostics of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Early in June, Aurora announced the acquisition of Mid-Atlantic Pathology Services, Inc. (MAPS), of Sterling, Virginia. MAPS has four pathologists and serves physicians in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. This group describes

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Lab Copay on the Table, But for Now, It’s Australia

Clinical Laboratory Trends / Robert Michel

CEO SUMMARY: Patient copayment is the idea that always appeals to government health officials who want to control healthcare costs. In Australia, Parliament has yet to vote on a bill that would, starting in July 2015, institute a patient copayment of $7.00 Australian for general practice visits, medical laboratory tests, and diagnostic imaging services. Reaction

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Local Labs vs. Central Labs Assessed in HER2 Test Study

Anatomic Pathology / Robert Michel

WHEN IT COMES TO HER2NEU TESTING, a study of accuracy just published by the journal Cancer may raise interesting questions for pathology groups across the nation. “Assessing the discordance rate between local and central HER2 testing in women with locally determined HER2- negative breast cancer,” was the title of the study published by Cancer on

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Futurist Predicts Less Margin, More Consolidation in Market

Clinical Laboratory Trends / Joseph Burns

CEO SUMMARY: Based on interviews with 40 CEOs of major healthcare companies, one expert says that the next three years will bring major changes to healthcare. In his presentation at the Executive War College, Ted Schwab noted that these changes include a swift adoption of budgeted care (and not value-based care), more consolidation that creates

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Partners Consolidates AP Using Common IT System

Laboratory Information Systems / Joseph Burns

CEO SUMMARY: Partners HealthCare of Boston, Massachusetts, is creating a single informatics platform for CP and AP across all six of the hospitals that it operates. It will replace 19 different pathology systems currently used at six sites with just seven integrated pathology systems. As this happens, the anatomic pathology and clinical pathology systems will

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June 30, 2014 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Late Breaking Lab News / Robert Michel

Will microbiologists soon be testing a patient’s cellphone for clinical diagnostic purposes? Researchers at the University of Oregon recently conducted a study and determined that cellphones have a similar microbiome to the skin of the person who owns the device. The study determined that three microbial types could be found on the surfaces of cellphones

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Bridging the Schism within your Laboratory

Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark / R. Lewis Dark

THERE’S A SIGNIFICANT SCHISM BECOMING VISIBLE within the house of laboratory medicine. I am calling your attention to this development because this schism probably exists within your own laboratory organization. On one side are a very large number of pathologists, lab administrators, and laboratory scientists who have yet to acknowledge that the lab testing marketplace

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Could Health Insurers Be at War with Clinical Labs?

Laboratory Billing / Robert Michel

CEO SUMMARY: It may sound ridiculous to assert that the nation’s largest health insurers are now “waging war” against clinical labs. However, some very smart people in the profession of laboratory medicine are expressing this opinion. To support such a conclusion, they point to payers’ recent drastic price cuts and network contracting strategies. Moreover, these

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