TAG:
lab test costs
Physician Group ACO Targets High-Volume Tests for Savings
HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF HOW an accountable care organization views cost control. Atrius Health sought to control excess costs by focusing on high-priced items. It started with inappropriate hospitalizations and imaging studies and moved on to laboratory testing. Atrius Health is…
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…
Aetna To Lower Lab Test Prices, New Fees Are Effective on July 1
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 t…
Health Insurers Now Finding Ways to Cut Costs and Shed Risks
CEO SUMMARY: Both employers and health insurers are taking aggressive steps to rein in healthcare costs. Several strategies to control spending and create powerful new incentives for providers are gaining favor. At this year’s Executive War College, Paul Mango of McKinsey & Company,…
Medicare Carrier Plans to Reject Molecular Claims
CEO SUMMARY: In September, Palmetto, a Medicare carrier serving California and seven other states, made public two draft local coverage determinations (LCDs) that revamp its coverage guidelines for molecular diagnostic tests (MDT) and laboratory-developed tests (LDT). All labs su…
HealthPartners Promotes Same-Day Lab Test Results
CEO SUMMARY: Patient focus groups told HealthPartners that they had anxiety as they waited days for lab test results. That encouraged HealthPartners to redesign workflows in its pathology department. Once it could deliver same-day lab test results electronically, HealthPartners launched a…
Community Hospital Builds Thriving Lab Outreach Program
CEO SUMMARY: When 330-bed Botsford Hospital of Farmington Hills, Michigan, got interested in laboratory outreach 10 years ago, it brought in a new laboratory leader, invested in new analyzers and informatics, and then let the quality of the operation attract new business from the communit…
FL Medicaid Gives Up On Statewide Lab Contract
CEO SUMMARY: With the withdrawal of the December 13, 2004 “Invitation to Negotiate” (ITN), Florida’s Medicaid bureaucrats seem to have thrown in the towel—at least for the moment—on the effort to give a single laboratory company an exclusive three-year contract to provide labora…
Military Labs Creating Global Lab Test Data Pool With LOINC
CEO SUMMARY: It’s a laboratory regionalization project without precedent because of its worldwide scale. Within the Armed Forces, laboratorians are working to seamlessly integrate laboratory test data generated by laboratories within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Veterans Administratio…
Eight Trends Reshaping Clinical Lab Services
CEO SUMMARY: Once again, THE DARK REPORT’S annual list of lab industry trends deals less with government regulation and influence on laboratory operations and more with the impact of new technologies and new management philosophies. Marketplace acceptance of these lab industry trends is…
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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