Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark

Acquisitions Bloom, at the Expense of Hospital Labs?

READERS WILL UNCOVER A THEME OF MERGERS AND CONSOLIDATIONS running throughout this issue of The Dark Report. Whether it be health systems acquiring or merging with each other or national laboratory companies seeking to run hospital lab businesses, it is an unstable time for just about any type of healthcare organization.  This is consistent with …

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Building Collaborations to Deliver More Value

Innovative clinical laboratory leaders closely monitoring the financial health of their labs or hospitals will find plenty to chew on in this issue of The Dark Report.  The laboratory team at Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina sets the stage with a case study about how the lab team’s interaction with health system administrators and …

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Alert! Changes to CLIA Accreditation, CLIA Revisions

MEDICAL LABORATORIES HAVE LIVED WITH THE REGULATIONS FOR THE CLINICAL LABORATORY IMPROVEMENTS AMENDMENTS (CLIA) since they were first implemented in 1992. Over the past 30 years there has been no major revision or updating of CLIA regulations. Nor has there been much change in the long-standing status quo associated with how labs choose which deeming …

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PAMA Cuts Have Simply Been Kicked Down the Road

PAYMENT RATE CUTS FOR CLINICAL LABORATORY TESTS, called for under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA), have been avoided temporarily—again.  A down-to-the-wire bill in Congress to keep the federal government funded into the new year included a provision to delay PAMA cuts to the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS) for 2023. This …

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Two Positive Messages to Focus on at Year’s End

Clinical laboratory managers and anatomic pathologists are winding down another tumultuous year for the healthcare industry. It was a year marked by unexpected twists and turns.  It was also a year marked by two positive developments for labs. First, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic seems to have peaked, even as new variants appear. Second, labs continue to …

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Innovations Might Reduce Need for Phlebotomists

ALREADY A SERIOUS PROBLEM PRIOR TO THE PANDEMIC, the shortage of trained phlebotomists continues to grow more serious with each passing month. Some clinical laboratories are offering wages of $25 per hour or more and say they cannot attract enough candidates to hire and train for this essential role.  However, there is a company developing …

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Clinical Laboratory News from North of the Border

In mid-October, Canada’s largest national conference for diag­nostics leaders took place in Toronto. It was their first gathering since the onset of the pandemic and much is happening with healthcare and medical laboratories in our northern neighbor. The Dark Report was there to identify innovative developments that might be useful to our clients and regular …

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Getting the Jump on Solving Major Lab Issues

Observant laboratory managers and pathologists will note a recurring theme among the business intelligence briefings in this issue of The Dark Report: Solutions to major challenges require proactive steps.  A case in point comes with our lead story about how to recruit and retain medical technologists (MTs), medical laboratory scientists (MLSs), and medical laboratory technicians …

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Consumer Trends, Quality Management, and Labs

TODAY’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS MARKED by uncertainty and unprecedented pressures. Every clinical laboratory and pathology group faces the triple whammy of shrinking budgets, staff shortages, and a rate of inflation that drives up the cost of supplies and salaries.  There are effective ways that labs can attack that triple whammy.  In this issue of The …

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You Asked for It. We Organized It.

DESPITE THE EASING OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN RECENT MONTHS, a pre-pandemic normal does not yet exist—if it ever will. Currently, most clinical laboratories, particularly those serving hospitals and health systems, are under the most intense pressure seen in decades.  At this moment, the big three sources of major headaches for lab managers are the …

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