Converting Paper Requisitions to Digital Cut Lab’s Costs

By Joseph Burns

CEO SUMMARY: Health Network Laboratories cut costs and shortened lab test turnaround time by converting paper requisitions to digital data. It did so by scanning paper requisitions and having a vendor do the required data entry. This helped the lab reduce errors in its patient data. Using…

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How Labs Can Add Value for Providers, Insurers, Pharma

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 15 – November 4, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: For pathologists and clinical, molecular, and genetic testing labs, appropriate reuses of lab data can provide a new source of revenue. Labs that serve as preferred providers of diagnostic testing data can help health systems, ordering physicians, pharmaceutical companies, an…

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Northwell Health Lab Team Leverages Data to Add Value

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 8 – June 10, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: Today, insurers get risk-adjusted payments for treating patients who have high-cost health conditions and they make risk-adjusted payments to physicians, hospitals, and other providers. At Northwell Health, the clinical lab saw the opportunity to leverage lab test data with …

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LIS-EHR Fees Increasing, Say Hospital Lab Execs

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 4 – March 18, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: Hospital and health system lab managers say some vendors of electronic health record systems for independent physicians are aggressively raising the fees they charge labs. Labs serving outreach physicians now pay more in two ways, they say. First, they pay the price the vendo…

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For Labs, Blockchain Offers New Opportunities

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 3 – February 25, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: Some of blockchain’s proponents view its potential uses in health information technology to combat cybersecurity threats and improve the secure exchange of health information through electronic medical record systems. But for clinical laboratories, blockchain could be the k…

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Pathology Firm Pays $63M to Settle Qui Tam Case

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 3 – February 25, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: Inform Diagnostics, formerly Miraca Life Sciences, settled the federal qui tam case while denying wrongdoing. The $63.5 million settlement will by paid by the former owner, Miraca Holdings, a Japanese company. The federal Department of Justice alleged that the company—then …

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Lower Prices, More Data in UHC’s New Lab Network?

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXVI No. 2 – February 4, 2019 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: It’s been a common strategy among managed care payers to seek the lowest prices for clinical laboratory testing when negotiating contracts with labs. However, lower prices may become less important over time as the health system moves away from fee-for-service payment towar…

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Dartmouth-Hitchcock Builds Strong Lab Outreach Business

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXV No. 10 – July 9, 2018 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: As health networks and hospitals consider outsourcing their lab outreach programs, the lab team at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (D-H) offers lessons about the value of retaining outreach. D-H is now in the eighth year of a sustained expansion of its laboratory outreach …

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In Florida, More Tests Added to UHC’s Decision-Support Program

By Joseph Burns | From the Volume XXV No. 1 – January 2, 2018 Issue

IN THE FIRST BROAD EXPANSION OF ITS pilot decision-support program for clinical lab testing in Florida, UnitedHealthcare (UHC) will add genetic and molecular tests, drug tests, and pathology procedures, among other assays starting in two months. On March 1, UHC will expand its labor…

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Paths of Hospital Labs, Independent Labs Diverge

By Robert Michel | From the Volume XXIV No. 16 – November 20, 2017 Issue

CEO SUMMARY: With each passing year, the primary role of hospital and health system labs evolves in a different direction than that of independent lab companies. This trend is a response to the creation of integrated delivery networks paid on value and how they are scored on their ability…

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