TAG:
lab quality confab
2013’s Top Ten Lab Stories Point to Tougher Times
CEO SUMMARY: For 2013, the big story was money—or, more accurately, less money for providers. This was not limited to clinical labs and pathology groups, but was equally true of hospitals and physicians. In THE DARK REPORT’S annual lookback at the year’s 10…
Broward Health’s Lab Pursues Multiple Ways to Cut Lab Costs
CEO SUMMARY: Tasked with cutting $2 million from their lab’s annual operating budget, the lab team at Broward Health System instituted changes that included a lab test formulary and ordering algorithms. In collaboration with physicians, these changes reduced the use of outmoded tests wh…
Nation’s Lab Innovators Attack Systemic Errors
CEO SUMMARY: One keynote speaker at this year’s Lab Quality Confab meeting tackled the sensitive subject of recurring bad quality within the lab and the costs associated with it. Lucia M. Berte, MA, MT(ASCP), showed a rapt audience how many sources of recurring bad quality exist and why…
Labs Push to Cut Costs As Budgets, Prices Shrink
CEO SUMMARY: Cost-cutting is now the prime directive at progressive labs because nearly every laboratory organization in the United States is under sustained financial pressure. This is due to shrinking budgets for hospital labs and more aggressive price-cutting by private payers. Even Ob…
Intermountain Seeks Shared Accountability
CEO SUMMARY: Intermountain Healthcare is one of the nation’s largest and most respected institutions. Its quality improvement efforts are well documented. Intermountain is pursuing an ambitious goal to limit cost increases to the rate of inflation. To reach this goal, every clinical dep…
First-Mover Labs Reveal Success with Lean & QMS
CEO SUMMARY: There is good news for those clinical labs and pathology groups currently operating robust Lean, Six Sigma, and process improvement programs. The Institute of Medicine’s new report calls for all healthcare providers to rapidly transform themselves into ‘continuously learn…
IOM Endorses Continuous Improvement, Lean
IT IS ONE OF THE IRONIES OF HEALTHCARE that it has taken the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) more than three decades to fully recognize the necessary and essential role that continuous improvement and the associated disciplines of Lean, Six Sigma, and process improvement must…
Process Improvement Coming to Healthcare
CEO SUMMARY: One new byword coming to healthcare in the United States is the “continuously-learning healthcare system.” At the upcoming Lab Quality Confab in San Antonio next month, lab managers and pathologists can learn more about how to achieve and sustain continuous improvement in…
Sarasota Hospital Lab Reduces Number of Hemolyzed Specimens
CEO SUMMARY: Seeking to improve turnaround time for stat lab tests, the laboratory at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System identified high rates of hemolysis as the chief reason for less than ideal TAT. Because 32% of blood draws were handled by the lab’s phlebotomy staff while 68% of b…
Ohio Lab Offers Lessons Learned from CAP 15189
CEO SUMMARY: For a lab looking to continually improve lab operations, becoming accredited to either ISO 15189 or CAP 15189 is an ideal challenge. After hearing from other lab directors about the benefits of becoming accredited to CAP 15189, the staff at Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohi…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXI, No. 5 – April 8, 2024
The fragmentation of consumer markets is reflected in clinical lab services, and The Dark Report examines this trend and how it will impact labs in the coming years. Also, The Dark Report notes that the FDA has issued a controversial memo to reclassify many high-risk IVD assays.
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