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.
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…
Quest Diagnostics Moves to Acquire LifeLabs of Canada
QUEST DIAGNOSTICS, ALREADY A CLINICAL LABORATORY BEHEMOTH IN THE U.S., is expanding its Nor…
Lab’s Innovation Center Encourages Staff Ideas
CEO SUMMARY: At a time when health plans consider lab testing a commodity, the team at Sonora Quest Laboratories deliberately set out to encourage ideas and innovation from its staff by creating the “Innovation Center of Excellence.” One innovation involves helping health plans and ph…
Wisc. Diagnostic Lab’s Alternative Staff Solutions
CEO SUMMARY: Even as clinical laboratories and pathology groups around the nation cope with a sustained shortage of qualified staff, the team at Wisconsin Medical Laboratories has successfully kept staffing at 96% of authorized levels. One effective strategy they use is to go into the com…
UnitedHealth Group Faces DOJ Antitrust Probe
CEO SUMMARY: Recent events have not been kind to UnitedHealth Group and its subsidiaries UnitedHealthcare and Optum. In February, just as UHG’s Change Healthcare division was hit with a major cyberattack that disrupted billions of dolla…
Lab Market Fragmenting, Creating New Opportunities
CEO SUMMARY: Even as consolidation continues in the ownership of hospitals, health systems, office-based physicians, and clinical laboratories, there is a powerful trend of fragmentation quietly transforming the way providers—including clinical labs and pathology groups—serve patient…
European Lab’s Data Breach Has Lessons for U.S. Clinical Labs
IN WHAT COULD BE A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR CLINICAL LABORATORIES, a cybersecurity researcher has reported the discovery of a medical laboratory database that publicly exposed COVID-19 test records containing people’s personal data, including their names, passport numbers, appointment details, and test …
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXI, No. 16 – November 25, 2024
Two different federal lawsuits that challenge the authority of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate laboratory developed tests (LDTs) will be combined. Plaintiffs and the government in both cases agreed to move forward on this basis.
See the full table of contentsHow Much Laboratory Business Intelligence Have You Missed?
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