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Volume XV No. 17 - December 22, 2008

Patient Retest Effort Is Extraordinary Event

IT IS NOT OFTEN THAT WE DEVOTE AN ENTIRE ISSUE TO A SINGLE TOPIC. The last single-topic special issue of THE DARK REPORT was almost exactly one year ago, when we provided the laboratory industry’s most detailed assessment of the Medicare Part B Competitive Bidding Demonstration Project, the details of which had finally been made …

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Vitamin D Test Issues Trigger Doctor Discussion

CEO SUMMARY: In recent months, Quest Diagnostics Incorporated quietly launched a campaign to notify certain patients and their physicians that they had received “inaccurate results” for Vitamin D tests it had performed. This notice includes an offer to retest the patient at no charge. There are several unprecedented dimensions to this story which have the …

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Doctor Notices Different Vitamin D Results over Time

CEO SUMMARY: Psychiatrist John J. Cannell, M.D., was in a unique position to see the noticeable upward shift in the Vitamin D results reported on his patients by Quest Diagnostics Incorporated over the past 24 months, along with the recent decline in test result levels in recent weeks. His Vitamin D Council and his newsletter, …

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Vitamin D Test Expert Discusses Mass Spec

CEO SUMMARY: Those labs performing Vitamin 25(OH) D testing by mass spectrometry face an interesting challenge. For more than two decades, physicians, patients, and a majority of credible clinical studies have accepted RIA and IA Vitamin 25(OH) D results as a familiar standard. That is why, to avoid confusing physicians, some labs using the mass …

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Quest Diagnostics Explains Confidence in LC-MS/MS Method

ONE ASPECT IN THE DEBATE about the integrity of Vitamin D tests produced by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC 0150MS/MS) is the discussion about how this method can produce results that are significantly higher than those produced by immunoassay-based methods. Quest Diagnostics addressed this point directly. In response to questions from THE DARK REPORT, Wael …

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Quest Discusses Use of Mass Spec Methodology

CEO SUMMARY: Having made the decision to perform nearly all Vitamin 25(OH) D testing by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated found the transition to be challenging. That was particularly true as the volume of Vitamin D specimens tripled at the nation’s largest lab company during the period May 2006 to May 2008. …

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Retest Program Offers Useful Lessons for Labs

CEO SUMMARY: Every day in every laboratory, there is the potential for some aspect of the testing process to go wrong and not be immediately detected. In such circumstances, the lab can then unknowingly report inaccurate test results to physicians and patients. That is why lab managers should have a contingency plan in place that …

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December 22, 2008 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Last Thursday, Sunquest Information Systems, Inc. of Tucson, Arizona, announced that it would purchase the “Outreach Advantage Solution” software system developed by Pathology Associates Medical Laborator ies of Spokane, Washington. PAML has spent most of this decade developing a comprehensive, integrated software system designed specifically to give hospital laboratory outreach programs a full service capability …

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