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Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark

Another Milestone in Physician Pay-for-Performance

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

EFFORTS TO EXPAND AND IMPROVE physician pay-for-performance programs are ongoing. The latest big news is the announcement by a consortium of California’s largest health insurers, employers, and physician groups that its existing pay-for-performance program will expand to pay quality-based bonuses equal to 10% of physicians’ income within five years. This goal was contained in a […]

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Complete Human DNA Profiling as a STAT Test

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

MOST OF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH A NEW SCIENTIFIC PRIZE that is in the planning stage. On January 27, The Wall Street Journal published a story that disclosed the plans of the X Prize Foundation to award a prize, totaling between $5 million and $20 million, to the team that first decodes the full DNA

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Coding Edits Are a Potential Hammerblow to Pathology

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

DURING THE NEXT SIX MONTHS, WE WILL WITNESS an intense debate between the pathology profession and the Medicare/Medicaid bureaucracy. This battle will center around the proposed MUEs (Medically Unbelievable Edits) which place restrictions on the units of service per patient per day on key CPT codes widely used in laboratory medicine. As you will read

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Pathologists: Will CDHP-insured Patients Pay You?

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

FOR THOSE AMONG YOU WHO THINK STRATEGICALLY, our White Paper is sure to be a revelation. It is a sophisticated and detailed overview of the role Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) will play in the upcoming revolution within the American healthcare system. Today I’d like to address one specific element in this White Paper. It is

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Internet as Threat and Opportunity for Labs

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

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE THIS CRUSTY CURMUDGEON WEIGHED IN ON technology changes with the potential to reshape laboratory services as we know them today. However, things are changing and today I’d like to call your attention to certain developments with the Internet and comment on their potential to trigger change in our industry. Many of

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Using Laboratory Informatics to Add Value

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

IN THIS ISSUE, YOU WILL READ ABOUT THE SALE of Spectrum Laboratory Network and the ongoing integration of laboratory services at Geisinger Health System. Although, on first reading, it may seem that these two stories are unrelated, I would like to call your attention to a common attribute that underpins the success of these two

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Mergers Create Health Insurance Oligopoly

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

WITH EACH ROUND OF ACQUISITIONS involving the nation’s largest health insurers, more power concentrates into the hands of ever-larger corporations. For example, just two companies, WellPoint, Inc. and UnitedHealth Group, Inc., now insure one-third of the 150 million Americans who have some form of private health insurance! In the short term, these acquisitions probably mean

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Do Regional Laboratories Have A Bright Future?

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

IF INTEGRATED INFORMATICS CAPABILITIES will be a major point of differentiation among competing laboratories in the future, then several warning flags have recently appeared in the laboratory industry. Regional laboratories and hospital lab outreach programs should take notice. One warning flag is the recent announcement by Laboratory Corporation of America that “eLabCorp,” a Web-connectivity system

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A Tale of Two Hospitals

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

DURING THE PAST TWO WEEKS, we’ve watched as the nation’s 35th largest city—New Orleans—and a metropolitan area encompassing more than 1 million people has literally ceased to exist. Today this region is effectively a ghost town and former residents are scattered throughout the United States. This event is unparalleled in American history. The closest natural

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PCR Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary in 2005

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

IT’S BEEN A BUSY YEAR AND I HOPE NO ONE THINKS we’ve been remiss by not mentioning a milestone anniversary until now. On the other hand, I personally can’t recall reading about this anniversary elsewhere in the lab industry press during 2005. So maybe I am among the few to call attention to the fact

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