By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXIV, No. 9 – June 26, 2017 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Across the nation, pathologists are at a crossroads. Now that the FDA has cleared a digital pathology and whole slide imaging (WSI) system for use in primary diagnosis, should they adopt this technology sooner or wait until later? One pathologist who has worked with WSI for many years shared the lessons learned in
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXIV, No. 1 – January 9, 2017 issue
CEO SUMMARY: As of January 1, 2017, clinical laboratories and pathology groups in Texas will find it more difficult to serve the 500,000 patients enrolled in UnitedHealthcare’s fully-insured commercial plans in the Lone Star State. That’s because—just as it did in Florida—UnitedHealthcare, with its partners BeaconLBS and Laboratory Corporation of America, is implementing its laboratory
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXI NO. 10 - July 21, 2014 issue
CEO SUMMARY: At a recent coding and billing conference, pathology and lab clients of one of the nation’s largest revenue management companies agreed that three trends have caused lower revenues since the start of 2014. One trend seen by labs involves higher deductibles and copayments from patients. Another is the exclusion of local labs from
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXI NO. 9 – June 30, 2014 issue
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 June
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXI NO. 4 – March 17, 2014 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Authorities for Eastern Health in Newfoundland and Labrador province in Canada are conducting a root cause analysis after finding discrepancies in breast cancer testing that affected nine patients. Health officials said these cases were discovered as a result of an improved quality assurance testing program and are unrelated to problems that plagued Eastern
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XX No. 16 - December 2, 2013 issue
CEO SUMMARY: On November 27, as the nation prepared for the Thanksgiving holiday, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the long-awaited final rules for 2014. Early analysis of the 1,300 pages of rules CMS released indicates that the agency moderated one of its proposals to cut back what pathologists and clinical
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XX No. 14 - October 21, 2013 issue
CEO Summary: Pathologists at Ottawa Hospital not only must handle a large volume of specimens regularly, but are experiencing a 14% per year growth in the number of specimens. Last year, when the average turnaround time for a case was nine days, the pathology department embarked on a series of Lean and process improvement projects.
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XX No. 7 - May 28, 2013 issue
IN RECENT MONTHS, labs are reporting the receipt of letters from Aetna, Inc., announcing that it will pay dramatically less than Medicare prices for many key lab tests. Aetna said that these lower prices will take effect on July 1, 2013.
Three examples illustrate the deep fee cuts that Aetna is attempting to push onto laboratories
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XX No. 7 - May 28, 2013 issue
CEO SUMMARY: When executives closed the doors of Pathwork Diagnostics last month, the simple explanation was that reimbursement for its proprietary molecular diagnostic test was inadequate. Indeed, that was part of the story. But other factors played significant roles in impeding growth at this lab company. Here is an inside look at six factors which
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIX No. 12 - August 27, 2012 issue
CEO Summary: It is one of the first clinical collaborations of this type to be anchored by use of digital pathology. Pathologists at the medical schools of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) are exchanging cases and sharing knowledge. During the first 18
