Laboratory Management
Laboratory management in today’s clinical lab industry is changing rapidly and facing entirely new challenges. One problem is the lack of upcoming younger lab managers, as the retirements of baby boomer pathologists, medical technologists and lab scientists are in the near future. These individuals make up the largest proportion of supervisors, managers, and lab administrators working in labs today.
As they retire, every clinical lab and pathology group needs to have the next generation of leaders ready to step up and assume responsibilities. But, across the lab industry, there are limited opportunities for every lab’s brightest up-and-comers to get the regular management development opportunities that are common among Fortune 500 companies. The Dark Intelligence Group has called for the establishment of a mentoring program to help overcome this problem.
At the same time, downward pressure on reimbursements and mounting competition have created an environment that requires much more effort for a medical lab to grow and thrive.
Legislation, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) of 2009 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, have placed significant demands on medical laboratories and healthcare providers to improve internal efficiency even while offering more services for less money. This pressure to “do more with less” is further compounded by the need to deliver increasingly personalized client service to retain and win clients.
With the era of fee-for-service medicine coming to a close, every clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology organization needs a strategy for getting paid, as new reimbursement models that support patient-centric care will make up a larger portion of lab revenues.
The challenge for every clinical laboratory manager is to understand how to evolve from a business model that is accession-centric or volume-centric to one that is patient-centric.
Many clinical laboratories today are developing data repositories to logically link all transactional and other information about a patient. These repositories allow physicians to see all relevant information, identify trends, and provide better care as a result, enabling labs to provide greater value to their customers, patients and payers, thus creating more value and becoming more patient-centric.
AMP Reports Provide Crucial Insights for Hiring Managers
IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE DART REPORT, Somak Roy, MD, chair of AMP’s Clinical Bioinformatician Body of Knowledge Steering Committee, shared best practices that hiring managers at clinical molecular diagnostic laboratories can use to ascertain which candidates could b…
Regional Health Systems Are New Dominant Players in M&A
READERS OF THE DARK REPORT UNDERSTAND HOW INTERTWINED THEIR CLINICAL LAB BUSINESS is with healthcare system mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Thus, financial service firm Morgan Stanley’s recent report on M&A activity in the healthcare industry will be of inte…
How Medicaid Cuts May Affect Clinical Labs
CEO Summary: As lawmakers debate the merits of President Donald Trump’s budget bill, it appears that Medicaid changes are on the horizon. For medical laboratories, three immediate areas to monitor include potentially decreased Medicaid recipients, federal cuts to Medicai…
UnitedHealth Group Heads into Difficult Waters Mid-Year
WITH THE NEWS THAT THE FORMER HEAD OF UNITEDHEALTH GROUP (UHG) has returned after the sudden resignation of the company’s CEO, it is apparent that pressure on the healthcare company continues to mount. This latest twist comes on top of a bad…
Labs Beware: ‘Vishing’ Rises as Major Cybersecurity Threat
CYBERSECURITY SHOULD ALWAYS BE TOP OF MIND FOR CLINICAL LABORATORIES AND PATHLOGY groups, especially since the notorious data breach at Change Healthcare in February 2024. Often, such security breaches begin with phishing campaigns in which employees are enticed to click on malicious li…
Quest Diagnostics, Labcorp Issue Q4 and Full Year 2024 Earnings
LAB ACQUISITIONS IN 2024 WERE A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO REVENUE GROWTH at the nation’s two biggest clinical laboratory companies. This was reflected in the fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings reports issued by Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics. Here are recently …
Change Healthcare Cyberattack Involved 100 Million Americans
AFTER EXPERIENCING WHAT MANY CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS consider to be one of the largest, most disruptive ransomware attacks ev…
Allina Doctors Express Concerns after Quest Acquires Lab Outreach
IN RECENT YEARS, QUEST DIAGNOSTICS AND LABCORP, the two behemoths of the U.S. clinical laboratory market, have been aggressively acquiring lab businesses from health systems across the country. They say that patients and providers will benefit from lower costs and be…
Federal Court Issues Ban on FTC’s Noncompete Rule
BY NOW, MOST CLINICAL LAB MANAGERS AND PATHOLOGY PRACTICE ADMINISTROATORS ARE AWARE of the Federal T…
Identifying Current Lab Trends from Labcorp & Quest Experience
CEO SUMMARY: Many different factors influence the operations of clinical laboratories in the United States today. One good source of competitive business intelligence is for lab administrators to follow the quarterly earnings calls of the nation’s two biggest public lab corporations. Wi…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 9 – June 23, 2025
In part one of an analysis about the state of AI in clinical laboratories, The Dark Report explores how frontline workers, especially younger ones, are using AI tools like ChatGPT far more than lab leaders. Recent reports elsewhere in the business world show executives underestimate staff AI use, raising concerns about a leadership gap in tech adoption. Clinical lab leaders must get more familiar with AI use cases. Also, in this issue of The Dark Report, there is discussion on how Medicaid cuts may affect clinical labs, an examination of the lab industry fallout from CLIAC termination, an analysis of AMP’s reports that provide crucial insights for Hiring Managers, and notes that regional health systems are new dominant players in M&A.
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