Joseph Burns
Joseph Burns is the senior editor of The Dark Report. An independent journalist in Falmouth, Mass., Burns has covered health care since 1991 and clinical laboratories since 2004. He writes for a variety of publications, including Managed Care magazine (where he is a contributing editor), Hospitals & Health Networks, and Healthcare Finance News. In addition, he is the insurance topic leader for the Association of Health Care Journalists and has worked as a writer and editor for The Commonwealth Fund, the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, the National Business Coalition on Health, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and the National Quality Forum. Burns has edited books on health care business strategies for Faulkner & Gray and Panel Publishers and was editor-in-chief of Business & Health magazine, formerly published by Medical Economics Co., and later was a contributing editor and columnist for Managed Healthcare Executive magazine. He began his career as a journalist in Connecticut, working as a newspaper reporter for The Wallingford Post and the Meriden Record-Journal and as a copy editor, reporter, and regional news editor for The Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest newspaper. While working for The Courant, he taught news writing at the University of Connecticut.
Articles by Joseph Burns
Chicago Lab Launches LDT, Finds 20% Positive
CEO SUMMARY: After seeing the novel coronavirus spread quickly in China, staff in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine developed a test to identify the pathogen in patients in Chicago and its suburbs. With the CDC’s assay in hand, it started work on its ow…
At the Epicenter, Northwell’s COVID-19 Lab Data Adds Value
CEO SUMMARY: This intelligence briefing provides a valuable look inside a clinical laboratory that is at ground zero in a city and state that is experiencing the nation’s most intense and fastest-moving incidence of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus. Lab leadership granted Th…
Regulators Acted Slowly as Labs Developed Tests for Coronavirus
WHEN THE FIRST DEATHS FROM THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS were reported in Seattle beginning on Feb. 29, Helen Chu, MD, MPH, took notice. An infectious disease expert at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Chu is a director with the Seattle Flu Study. Since…
In New York, Lab Offers Mobile Virus Sample Collections
CEO SUMMARY: To allow patients and physicians to order at-home specimen collections of the novel coronavirus, Northwell Labs trained its 12-member mobile phlebotomy service in the procedures needed to collect samples using nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs. Since training occurred in …
At the Epicenter, Northwell’s COVID-19 Lab Data Adds Value
This is an excerpt of a 3,210-word article in the March 30, 2020 issue of THE DARK REPORT (TDR). The full article is available to members of The Dark Intelligence Group. CEO SUMMARY: This intelligence briefing provides a valuable look inside a …
Drive-Up COVID-19 Test Site Launched in 3 Days
CEO SUMMARY: After seeing the largest cluster of confirmed coronavirus infections in one location, New York State took emergency measures “to attack the hotspot at its source.” The state opened a drive-through specimen-collection site offering free testing without an appoi…
Providers Get Creative as FDA Clears More IVD Firms’ Tests
CEO SUMMARY: Clinical and molecular test laboratories, hospitals, public health agencies, and other providers are taking unusual measures to expand the number of tests available to identify the spread of the new coronavirus. When a hospital needed funding to buy test kits for …
OIG 2020 Plan of Work to Review Billing for Medicare Part B Tests
Since October, the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published two versions of its plan of work for 2020. In both versions, the inspectors highlighted OIG’s efforts to review compliance with Medicare Part B billing requirements for clinical labora…
COVID-19 Patient? Northwell Has Mobile Phlebotomy App
>CEO SUMMARY: What better way to limit the spread of a deadly novel coronavirus than to allow patients who suspect they have the COVID-19 illness to use a mobile phone to book an appointment with a phlebotomist who makes house calls? Northwell Laboratories started this service in Novem…
Northwell Lab Team Validates COVID-19 Test on Fast Timeline
CEO SUMMARY: Clinical labs are working with haste to test for the novel coronavirus, also called nCoV and SARS-CoV-2. Their efforts to prepare for high capacity testing for viral respiratory illness include validating molecular tests for the newly-identifie…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 6 – April 21, 2025
Now that a federal judge has vacated the FDA’s LDT rule, The Dark Report analyzes the judgement and notes the various steps the FDA could take in response. Also, lab testing at pharmacies is proving to be less successful than was once anticipated.
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