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.
Consider Tenet-SBCL Deal As Timely Wake-Up Call
CEO SUMMARY: Expect the Tenet-SBCL contract announcement to trigger similar deals during the next 18 months. Competition and the need to gain economic advantage will drive some hospital CEOs to turn their laboratories over to commercial laboratory partners. The number of such joint ventur…
Market Forces Cause Detroit’s Lab Network To Launch Operations
CEO SUMMARY: Joint Venture Hospital Laboratories’ success rests on an essential fact: it exists to respond to marketplace demands. The network links laboratory operations of 24 hospitals owned by eight integrated delivery systems in Greater Detroit. Not only is it the oldest continuousl…
Louisiana Reference Lab Purchased By Dynacare
CEO SUMMARY: General Health System of Baton Rouge decided to “cash in” the capital value of its consolidated laboratory organization by selling it to Dynacare. It will use the money for other corporate projects. This sales transaction validates that there is still considerable value t…
Quest Announces Major Restructuring for 1998
CEO SUMMARY: Recognizing the reality of laboratory over-capacity in the marketplace, Quest Diagnostics Incorporated intends to align its laboratory capacity with existing specimen volumes. In so doing, it’s taking a progressive step and moving more aggressively than its two national com…
UroCor, Inc.; Histology & AP.
UROCOR, INC. MATCHES THERAPEUTICS WITH DIAGNOSTICS With the recent signing of a co-promotion agreement with Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, UroCor, Inc. is positioned to offer therapeutics as a complement to its diagnostic testing. Based in Oklahoma City, UroCor is a fast-growing c…
Tenet, SBCL Discussing 33 Hospital Lab Contract
CEO SUMMARY: Tenet Healthcare’s decision to entertain proposals for improving laboratory operations in its Southern California division triggered a year-long discussion with national laboratories. If a deal results, it would represent one of the largest “re-engineering” projects bet…
Niche Markets Boost Earnings For Both DIANON And LabOne
THIRD QUARTER EARNINGS at DIANON Systems and LabOne, Inc. demonstrate that niche market strategies can be growth engines for clinical laboratories, even in the face of declining reimbursement. As the crunch in clinical testing hit the laboratory industry in recent y…
California’s Rumor Mill Links LabCorp & Unilab
CEO SUMMARY: Continued financial pressure on all laboratories operating in California leads some industry observers to believe that Laboratory Corporation of America and Unilab might be considering some kind of deal between the two companies. Senior executives at both laboratories say suc…
California’s Lab Market To Undergo More Change
CEO SUMMARY: Every laboratory in California continues to operate in a financially-punishing environment. Further shake-outs must occur as the economic forces unleashed by managed care take their toll on clinical laboratories. Expect radical changes to occur within the next 12 months….
Quest Diagnostics & SmithKline Release Third Quarter Financials
It appears that 1997 will be kinder to Quest Diagnostics Inc. and SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories (SBCL) than the last three years. Both companies reported improved financial results for third quarter and mixed results for year-to-date. As of press time, …
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 12 – August 25, 2025
In an exclusive interview, a laboratory industry M&A specialist discusses what’s driving lab outreach sales to national lab companies. Also, The Dark Report analyzes ways in which pathology and clinical labs can profitably partner with pharmaceutical companies.
See the full table of contentsHow Much Laboratory Business Intelligence Have You Missed?
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