Clinical Laboratory Trends
Clinical laboratories, where tests are done on clinical specimens in order to get information about the health of a patient as pertaining to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, are facing numerous challenging trends as healthcare reform continues to evolve.
Some of these clinical laboratory trends include:
- The Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) of 2014.
Under PAMA, many clinical lab organizations will see a substantial decline over the coming years in the prices paid to them for the highest-volume lab tests reimbursed under Medicare Part B. The law specifies that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) can begin enacting those price cuts in 2017.
- Laboratory benefit management program
The laboratory benefit management program is a controversial program created by UnitedHealthcare in 2014. All outpatient laboratory services for members who are part of the Laboratory Benefit Management Program are subject to new requirements including advance notification and new medical policies.
Physicians serving UHC’s commercial patients in Florida must notify UHC when ordering any of 80 clinical laboratory tests. Pre-authorization is also required for certain tests.
During its introduction phase, the program has generated widespread resistance from Florida physicians, who protest that it will cause unnecessary delays for patient treatment, and undue burdens for doctors ordering tests. In addition to problems with lab test pre-notification algorithms within the BeaconLBS system, other problems cited by physicians include the exclusion of all but 13 Florida labs from the BeaconLBS “laboratory of choice network.”
- Accountable care organizations
ACOs are the product of a provision in the Affordable Care Act of 2010. They are integrated care networks of providers with the ability to provide care to, and manage patients, across the continuum of care that should include different institutional settings, such as ambulatory care, inpatient hospital care, and even post-acute care. Clinical labs have had difficulty gaining entry into newly- forming ACOs.
At the same time, a positive clinical laboratory trend is the increasing popularity of personalized medicine (PM), a medical model that proposes the customization of healthcare – with medical decisions, practices, and/or products being tailored to the individual patient. In this model, diagnostic testing is critically important, as it is often employed for selecting appropriate and optimal therapies based on the context of a patient’s genetic content or other molecular or cellular analysis.
Expert Lists Strategies to Cope with Cyber Attacks
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2021’s Top 10 Lab Stories Confirm Important Trends
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Payers Continue to Increase Coverage of Liquid Biopsies
SINCE THE FIRST BLOOD-BASED, circulating-tumor DNA (ctDNA) sequencing test for cancer became available in 2014, federal and private payer coverage of these so-called “liquid biopsy” tests has increased substantially. Now, clinical laboratory and pathology directors can expect additional coverage …
New Lab, Pathology Trends at Executive War College 2021
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By 2027, Walgreens Wants 1,000 Primary Care Clinics
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SUNY Hospital Uses Drones to Move COVID Test Kits
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All Labs Are Threatened by Encryption, Ransomware
CEO SUMMARY: Cybercrime—in the form of encryption attacks followed by ransom demands—is now a threat to every clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology group in the United States. Experts recommend that all labs elevate the attention they pay to their incident response teams ta…
Amazon Now Interested in Home Testing Services
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New Players May Alter Who Buys & Who Orders Lab Tests
CEO SUMMARY: This first installment in our series describes why market forces are at work to create a new player in healthcare that will transform the lab testing marketplace as we know it today in two ways. First, a new category of primary care providers has the potential to eventu…
Predicting Future Demand for COVID-19 Testing
CEO SUMMARY: After 15 months of the pandemic, the nation’s clinical laboratories are at an interesting crossroads. Is the COVID-19 outbreak diminishing and close to disappearing? Or might it intensify again, particularly when the traditional influenza season arrives next fall? The…
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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