TAG:
lab test prices
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…
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…
Employers, Payers Are Challenging ‘High’ Test Prices
ONE NATIONAL TREND IN CLINICAL LABORATORY TESTING that has not yet gotten wide play outside the pages of THE DARK REPORT is the emergence of what might be termed a “war” by national and regional health insurers against the “higher” prices often charged by hospital laboratories. This is a key…
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,…
Hospital Labs Feel More Pressure to Lower Prices
CEO SUMMARY: It’s a new trend and gathering momentum. At managed care contract renewal time, more hospitals and health systems report much stronger pressure from health insurers to accept deep cuts to laboratory test prices. At the same time, managed care companies are getting smarter a…
Payer Trend in New Hampshire Is to Engage Lab Patients
CEO SUMMARY: A health insurer’s two-year-old effort to have patients choose low-cost laboratory testing options is causing patients to shift their lab work away from New Hampshire’s hospitals and instead use Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, and ConVerge (a commercial lab company). This new…
Today’s Lab Test Model Won’t Survive Reforms
CEO SUMMARY: For more than three decades, independent lab companies have waxed fat by increasing their respective market share of lab test referrals from office-based physicians. This era is poised to end as growing numbers of office-based physicians begin to practice medicine within an a…
Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp Report Q-4, Full Year Earnings
IN RECENT WEEKS, each of the nation’s two largest public laboratory companies reported earnings for fourth quarter 2011 and full year 2011. Organic growth at both lab companies continues at low single-digit rates. This continues the pattern of relatively modest growth that has been posted by each …
‘Pull Through’ Is Key Issue in Lab Whistleblower Suit
CEO SUMMARY: Now comes a whistleblower lawsuit in federal court with the claim that, in the 2007 contract between UnitedHealth Group and Laboratory Corporation of America, LabCorp’s discounted lab test prices were a kickback that violated Medicare law. LabCorp has denied the al…
Former Lab CEO Explains Why He Filed Lawsuit
CEO SUMMARY: It may be the first time that a former public laboratory CEO has turned whistleblower. Andrew Baker, formerly Chairman and CEO of Unilab Corporation in the 1990s, filed a qui tam case in federal court last year that centers on the practice of lab companies offering private he…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 6 – April 21, 2025
Now that a federal judge has vacated the FDA’s LDT rule, The Dark Report analyzes the judgement and notes the various steps the FDA could take in response. Also, lab testing at pharmacies is proving to be less successful than was once anticipated.
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