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.
Lab’s Anemia Program Brings in New Revenue
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How to Better Recruit Millennial Pathologists
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Amazon to Close Employee COVID-19 Testing Lab in Ky.
IN A MOVE THAT MAY SURPRISE SOME OBSERVERS, Amazon announced it will close its COVID-19 employee testing laboratory in Hebron, Ky., which is just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. This is the second large COVID-19 clinical laboratory to publ…
California Cancels COVID-19 Test Contract with PerkinElmer
CALIFORNIA HAS SHED MORE LIGHT ON THE DECISION to terminate PerkinElmer’s valuable contract to run the Valencia Branch Laboratory (VBL). The lab has been embroiled in controversy for much of its existence. The state noted that SARS-CoV-2…
New Trends Reshaping Healthcare, Lab Testing
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Labs Use IoT Tools for Specimen Logistics
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Labcorp to Buy Outreach, Manage Ascension Labs
CEO SUMMARY: In a blockbuster deal valued at almost half a billion dollars, Labcorp will manage dozens of hospital labs in 10 states on behalf of Ascension Health, one of the biggest health systems in the country. Labcorp will also spend $400 million to acquire certain assets of Asc…
CLIA Accreditation Market: More Competitive Now?
CEO SUMMARY: It’s been three decades since compliance with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) became mandatory. During that time, there has been little competition among the major organizations with deeming status by the Medicare Program to accredit labs to CLIA…
How to Achieve Success with Genetic Test Prior Authorization
AS MANAGED CARE PAYERS INCREASINGLY REQUIRE PRIOR AUTHORIZATION FOC GENETIC TESTS, clinical laboratories should understand the ins and outs of what it takes to get reimbursed for testing they provide. Almost all payers now require prior authorization (P…
Pathology Lab Transforms, Runs 1M COVID-19 Tests
CEO SUMMARY: Last spring, a histopathology lab in Illinois began running molecular COVID-19 tests and decided the clinical side of the lab would focus exclusively on PCR testing for COVID-19. The challenge was how to access a reliable source of test kits, reagents, and supplies to o…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 10 – July 14, 2025
This issue is strong on different flavors of enforcement that clinical laboratories, whether they want to or not, will need to contend with. Lab stakeholders provide insights that medical labs need to brace for more action to counter pending test reimbursement rate cuts under PAMA. Also, this issue provides the legal and regulatory landscape for clinical labs’ use of AI and how it evolves with the technology. AI is creating legal uncertainty for clinical labs, especially around data privacy and FDA oversight of AI tools in diagnostics.
See the full table of contentsHow Much Laboratory Business Intelligence Have You Missed?
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