Since 1995, Reliable Business Intelligence for Clinical Laboratories, Pathology Groups and Laboratory Diagnostics

Volume IX No. 11 - August 5, 2002

Attack on Clinical Path Professional Payments

MANY PATHOLOGISTS WITH AN ECONOMIC INTEREST in clinical pathology professional component reimbursement have yet to fully appreciate the impact of an unfavorable decision rendered by a Florida appeals court recently. As you will read on page 5, an insurance company in Florida was actively sending letters to its patients and instructing them not to pay …

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Lab Testing to Boom During This Decade

CEO SUMMARY: Several recent acquisitions of lab test technology by billion-dollar diagnostics manufacturers reinforce a new reality in the healthcare marketplace: developing new diagnostic tests is faster, cheaper, and more profitable than developing new pharmaceutical products. This simple economic fact is driving an amazing expansion in the number of companies developing new lab test technology. …

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Florida Appeals Court Strikes Blow To Clinical Path Payment

LEGAL ARGUMENTS SUPPORTING payment for clinical pathology professional services were dealt a blow when Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal issued an unfavorable ruling on July 12 in Daytona Beach, Florida. “The import of the court’s ruling seems to be that a pathologist in Florida cannot bill a patient for clinical pathology professional services unless …

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Dade Behring Primed To Become Public Firm

CEO SUMMARY: Dade Behring is executing an ambitious plan to restructure its finances and become a public company. To reduce its debt burden, Dade’s three owners are giving up their stock. Banks and bondholders will swap a portion of their debt for shares of stock in Dade. Once the financial restructure is completed, Dade Behring …

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Specialty Laboratories’ New CEO Reveals How His Company Is Changing

“You will see a more tightly focused Specialty Labs. We won’t try and do everything, rather we will do what is important for our customers.” —Douglas S. Harrington, M.D CEO SUMMARY: In recent months, several events roiled the market for hospital send-out testing. Not the least was the public disclosure of state and federal sanctions …

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Big Premium Increases Drive Higher Profits at Nation’s HMOs

EVEN AS EMPLOYERS COMPLAIN about spiraling healthcare costs, the nation’s biggest health insurers are enjoying robust profits. That brings up the interesting question about whether providers, including laboratories, can get better pricing during the next year, since HMOs are again profitable. Bellwether HMOs To Watch Good bellwethers for the HMO industry’s financial health are Aetna, …

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Unfolding Events at Unilab, Specialty Labs and Dynacare

RECENT WEEKS BROUGHT important developments to several public lab companies. Each development changes and alters the competitive marketplace for laboratory testing services. It was big news at Specialty Laboratories, Inc. when the troubled lab company signed a Plan of Correction (POC) with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), thus lifting sanctions that affected …

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“August 5, 2002 Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Malpractice insurance has become a major concern in a growing number of states. Carriers are withdrawing from some markets and premium increases are significant. Pathologists in Florida tell THE DARK REPORT that they are awaiting quotes for next year, but that insurance brokers have told them to expect premiums to double, from around $15-$17,000 per …

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