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The Dark Report

Healthcare’s Ongoing Struggle: Patients or Profits?

Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark /

ALL THE MISPLACED INCENTIVES OF A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM that uses fee-for-service to reimburse providers continue. The diverse spread of lab industry business intelligence presented in this issue of THE DARK REPORT vividly demonstrates that there continues to be a “best” and a “worst” in provider motives and behaviors during the last days of fee-for-service payment. […]

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Lab Benefit Management Bill Advances in FL Senate

Clinical Laboratory Trends /

CEO SUMMARY: To date, a bill to restrict how health insurers use lab benefit management systems such as UnitedHealthcare’s BeaconLBS, has been favorably received in the Florida Senate. But the bill may face opposition when presented to the Senate’s Appropriations Committee. In a report, the state Office of Insurance Regulation said that restricting the use

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Florida AG Opposes Bill Over Customary Charges

Clinical Laboratory /

CEO SUMMARY: It was a surprise to the Florida Attorney General that a bill had surfaced in the Florida Legislature to amend the existing state law’s definition of usual and customary pricing to the Medicaid program. The bill would even make that change in definition retroactive. If this bill clears the legislature and becomes law,

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Phlebotomy Contributes To Drop in Sepsis Mortality

Clinical Laboratory /

CEO SUMMARY: When Intermountain Healthcare began a quality improvement program to address sepsis, its sepsis mortality rate was 20.2%, among the lowest in the nation. By 2007, all 15 of its hospitals had deployed this program. A breakthrough came in recent years, when a phlebotomist was added to the team and contributed new insights into

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February 8, 2016 Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News

Late Breaking Lab News /

Microbiology’s most important reagent is undergoing a supply crunch and becoming more expensive. Agar production is being affected by two factors. One is the increased global demand for seaweed. The second are new restrictions on the trade of seaweed, intended to protect natural stocks of seaweed. In December, Thermo Fisher Scientific of Waltham, Massachusetts, said it

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Newsmaker Interview: Matthew Hawkins

Laboratory Information Systems /

CEO SUMMARY: By now, most pathologists and clinical laboratory administrators recognize that effective use of information technology will be a critical success factor as healthcare systems transform to do population health management and to use “big data” with value-based payment models. As the provider of laboratory information systems to hundreds of the nation’s major hospitals,

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Labs Can Earn Revenue Through Data Analytics – December 28, 2015

The Dark Report /

CEO SUMMARY: There is a new buyer for lab test data, creating an opportunity for labs to build a new revenue stream. Medivo, Inc., of New York, describes itself as a healthcare data analytics company whose mission is to unlock the power of lab data to improve health. It works with clinical labs and pathology groups to de-identify and integrate

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NY Times Asks: ‘Is Lab Testing the Wild West?’

Commentary and Opinion by R. Lewis Dark /

HOW MANY OF YOU SAW THE NEWS STORY PUBLISHED LAST MONTH by The Wall Street Journal with the headline, “Is Lab Testing the ‘Wild West’ of Medicine?” It is the latest in a series of news stories about issues and questions involving the accuracy and quality of clinical laboratory tests delivered to patients daily here

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Florida Legislators to Hold Hearing on Bill About Payer Use of Decision Support for Lab Orders

Clinical Laboratory Trends /

CEO SUMMARY: Physicians in Florida and their state medical associations continue to battle UnitedHealth over its laboratory benefit management program that uses the lab test ordering system by BeaconLBS, a business unit of LabCorp. The latest round in this fight is language in a Florida Senate bill that would prohibit the use of a “clinical

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After Theranos-Safeway Split, Grocer Picks Sonora Quest Laboratories

Clinical Laboratory Trends /

IT’S RARE TO FIND ONE COMPANY STEP IN after another fails to execute a business strategy successfully. But that happened when Sonora Quest Laboratories in Scottsdale, Arizona, moved to fill the void created when Theranos Inc. did not fulfill an agreement to open patient service centers (PSCs) in Safeway stores in Arizona. Since last month,

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