TAG:
lab test
Expect Changes in How Calif. Labs Set Test Prices
CEO SUMMARY: What a difference two years makes. Back in April 2009, when then-Attorney General Jerry Brown joined the whistleblower lawsuit alleging that seven or more California lab companies had violated state law on pricing provider services, the popular wisdom among lab execu…
Putting Centrifuges Into Courier Cars For Mobile Processing
CEO SUMMARY: To improve the quality of lab services it provides to more than 300 skilled nursing facilities (SNF) while reducing costs, MuirLab of Concord, California, has created a “mobile specimen processing” solution. It operates a fleet of courier cars with centr…
Using Audits to Uncover Bad Data in the Lab
CEO SUMMARY: Labs using Lean, Six Sigma, and similar quality management methods are now putting these tools to a new purpose. They are being employed to validate the accuracy of metrics designed to monitor and manage work processes directly related to turnaround times and custome…
Paper Requisition Signature Rule Contradicts 2001 Actions
CEO SUMMARY: Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) used publication of the proposed 2011 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule to introduce new language that would require, as of January 1, 2011, that all paper requisitions for clinical laboratory tests for Me…
How Labs Should Comply With New Signature Rule
CEO SUMMARY: Across the nation, clinical laboratories and pathology groups are reacting to the new Medicare rule that requires a physician signature on a paper requisition for clinical laboratory tests. Laboratories using paper requisitions will need to add a signature line, then…
Beckman Coulter and Genoptix Offer Themselves Up for Sale
FOR DIFFERENT REASONS, last month two large companies in the lab industry put themselves up for sale. Assuming that both companies are sold, one consequence may be further consolidation in both the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) manufacturing sector and the lab testing sector. It was on Decembe…
Pursuing More Benefits From Next Generation Lab Automation
CEO Summary: Once it was decided to replace an aging, five-year-old laboratory automation system at the laboratory of Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Illinois, the administration at the hospital issued a challenge. It asked the laboratory team to deliver an immediate 10% cos…
January 18, 2011 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”
Do you know about GRIPE? It’s the Group for Research in Pathology Education and it just concluded its winter meeting last week at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. The organization has approximately 120 subscribers and, although mos…
Any Future for Loss-Leader Lab Pricing?
OUTSIDE OF CALIFORNIA, few pathologists or laboratory administrators are aware of the unfolding enforcement campaign that was initiated by the state’s Medi-Cal program. At issue is a decades-long practice of offering providers low laboratory test prices—in some cases well below the Medi-Cal fee …
Discounted Lab Prices Become Issue in California
CEO SUMMARY: For decades, California’s lab testing market has been considered the Wild West because clinical lab companies have felt relatively free to offer deeply-discounted prices to expand market share and take business away from competitors. Now these discounted pricing pr…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 13 – September 15, 2025
The Dark Report examines a new bill that would reform PAMA and avoid reimbursement rate cuts scheduled for January 2026. Clinical laboratory leaders are urged to make their voices heard in Congress. Also, an expert describes how labs can fix pre-analytical errors and avoid disaster.
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