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

Volume XXI No. 9 - June 30, 2014

Survival Essentials for Local Labs

IF THERE IS ANY SINGLE SIGN OF TOUGH TIMES FOR LOCAL LABS, it is decreasing access to patients due to the exclusionary contracting tactic of health insurers. That tactic is the subject of our lead story. Unhappy with this tactic, a number of lab administrators and lab management consultants are starting to say: “I’m as …

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Excluding Lab Competitors Helps Big Labs Grab Greater Market Share

CEO SUMMARY: Changes in healthcare are motivating health insurers and the nation’s largest lab testing companies to enter into contracts in which the large lab company lowers its lab test prices to the payer in return for having the payer exclude that lab company’s toughest competitors from the payer’s provider network. A number of lab …

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Aurora Diagnostics Acquires Two Pathology Group Practices

TWO MORE PATHOLOGY GROUPS gave up their independence in recent weeks. Both groups were acquired byAurora Diagnostics of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Early in June, Aurora announced the acquisition of Mid-Atlantic Pathology Services, Inc. (MAPS), of Sterling, Virginia. MAPS has four pathologists and serves physicians in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. This group describes …

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Lab Copay on the Table, But for Now, It’s Australia

CEO SUMMARY: Patient copayment is the idea that always appeals to government health officials who want to control healthcare costs. In Australia, Parliament has yet to vote on a bill that would, starting in July 2015, institute a patient copayment of $7.00 Australian for general practice visits, medical laboratory tests, and diagnostic imaging services. Reaction …

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Local Labs vs. Central Labs Assessed in HER2 Test Study

WHEN IT COMES TO HER2NEU TESTING, a study of accuracy just published by the journal Cancer may raise interesting questions for pathology groups across the nation. “Assessing the discordance rate between local and central HER2 testing in women with locally determined HER2- negative breast cancer,” was the title of the study published by Cancer on …

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Futurist Predicts Less Margin, More Consolidation in Market

CEO SUMMARY: Based on interviews with 40 CEOs of major healthcare companies, one expert says that the next three years will bring major changes to healthcare. In his presentation at the Executive War College, Ted Schwab noted that these changes include a swift adoption of budgeted care (and not value-based care), more consolidation that creates …

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Partners Consolidates AP Using Common IT System

CEO SUMMARY: Partners HealthCare of Boston, Massachusetts, is creating a single informatics platform for CP and AP across all six of the hospitals that it operates. It will replace 19 different pathology systems currently used at six sites with just seven integrated pathology systems. As this happens, the anatomic pathology and clinical pathology systems will …

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June 30, 2014 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Will microbiologists soon be testing a patient’s cellphone for clinical diagnostic purposes? Researchers at the University of Oregon recently conducted a study and determined that cellphones have a similar microbiome to the skin of the person who owns the device. The study determined that three microbial types could be found on the surfaces of cellphones …

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