R. Lewis Dark
Articles by R. Lewis Dark
1999’s ‘To Err Is Human’ Still an Opportunity for Labs
NOT ONLY DID THE 1999 PUBLICATION OF ‘TO ERR IS HUMAN” trigger a wave of national news coverage about patient harm in hospitals, it also launched this nation’s healthcare system on a multi-decade journey to boost the quality of care, reduce medical errors, and increase the transparency of both pati…
Halfway Through 2022, More Changes Come at Labs
APPROACHING THE MIDWAY MARK OF 2022, some clinical laboratory directors and pathologists might feel like they’ve already experienced enough changes to last the whole year. For example, since the start of 2022, we’ve seen SARS-CoV-2 testing surges co…
Data Innovation Plays a Key Role on Future Fronts
BETTER COLLECTION AND USE OF CLINICAL DATA WAS A PROMINENT THEME discussed by attendees at last month’s annual Executive War College Conference on Laboratory and Pathology Management in New Orleans. Laboratory directors and pathologists have lo…
Despite the Challenges, Labs Are Prevailing
EVENTS IN THE WORLD, THE UNITED STATE, AND THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM over the past two years have challenged clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups in unprecedented ways. Stand back for a moment and consider what has unfolded since Jan. 1,…
COVID-19: a Fork in the Road for Future Lab Testing?
We have all experienced a pandemic unique in the history of the world. Two elements, in particular, distinguished this pandemic from earlier global outbreaks. First, genetic technologies allowed scientists to almost instantly sequence the DNA of the novel coronavirus, once it was recognized as a uniq…
Artificial Intelligence ‘Invades’ Pathology, Billing
Predictions about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform nearly every area of healthcare are about to become reality. For the profession of laboratory medicine, AI is making speedy inroads into two areas. The first is anato…
Witness the Land Grab to Control Healthcare Data
LIKE MOST OF YOU, IT CERTAINLY CAUGHT MY ATTENTION WHEN I LEARNED in December that Oracle will pay $28 billion—with a B!—to buy Cerner Corporation. I don’t question the value of Cerner’s products; the company has an EHR product tha…
2021 Closes with Two Major Lab Industry Events
Normally, the time around Christmas and New Year passes quietly, typically without any significant developments. Such was not the case for the clinical laboratory industry in the last month of 2021 because of two announcements, each of which confirms ongoing market trends in healthcare and the lab te…
Congress Votes: No PAMA Price Cuts for 2022
IT’S WELCOME NEWS THAT CONGRESS VOTED EARLIER THIS MONTH to defer the PAMA price cuts to the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS) that were scheduled to take place in 2022. This is a positive development for the finances of the nation’s clinical labs, particularly the smaller, independent labs t…
VALID Act vs. VITAL Act: Day of Reckoning for LDTs
TWO DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT BILLS HAVE SURFACED IN CONGRESS, each with the potential to have substantial impact on how laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) are regulated by agencies of the federal government. One bill even creates a new acronym for the lab industry: IVCT for in vitro clinical tests….
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXX No. 2 – January 23, 2023
The Dark Report explores the decision by The Joint Commission to no longer accept COLA-accredited facilities at its own accredited organizations, and reprints the letters sent by both TJC and COLA relative to the move. In other news, CLIA changes are coming and The Dark Report has an exclusive interview with a member of the committee studying those potential changes.
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