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Two U.S. Labs Pursuing ISO 15189 Accreditation

CEO SUMMARY: In their first public interviews, the nation’s only two laboratories to seek ISO 15189:2007 accreditation share insights about the process, along with its challenges and benefits. Both laboratories are in the final stages of implementation and expect to earn accreditation b…

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Piedmont Med Lab Mixes ISO with Lean & Six Sigma

CEO SUMMARY: Piedmont Medical Laboratory (PML) could be the only clinical laboratory ever to pursue three quality improvement initiatives simultaneously. Even as it was in the early stages of implementing both Lean and Six Sigma methods, PML also decided to seek ISO 15189:2007 accreditati…

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ISO 15189 Is the Goal at Avera McKennan Lab

CEO SUMMARY: Now entering its ninth month on the path to accreditation under ISO 15189:2007 Medical Laboratories, Avera McKennan’s lab recently completed its “gap analysis.” This important step prepared the laboratory for the pre-assessment and assessment steps that will result in a…

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Health Record Databanks Are Different Than RHIOs

CEO SUMMARY: Forget CHINs from the 1990s and RHIOs from this decade. The future of regional health data repositories may turn out to be a patient-controlled model, often called a “Health Record Bank” (HRB). Here is the lab industry’s first look at this nascent movement. HRBs are und…

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Labs in British Columbia Meet Tough PT Standards

CEO SUMMARY: Facing a crisis due to several highly publicized deficiencies in lab testing, pathologists in Canada are using proficiency testing (PT) to improve standards. In British Columbia, PT is mandatory and every lab is evaluated every quarter. Pathologists in BC recommend that every…

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Low Vitamin D Linked To Greater Risk of Death

CEO SUMMARY: A new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine is likely to further spur demand for vitamin D testing. Already, labs are dealing with a dramatic increase in testing for vitamin D deficiency, with test volumes more than doubling in the past 12 months. This new research is c…

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September 08, 2008 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”

Here’s an update on the issue of why pathologists working in independent laboratories will not be paid under the Medicare Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI). (See TDR, August 18, 2008.) Last week, Donald McLeod, a spokesman at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medic…

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Two Healthcare Trends Collide on These Pages

THIS ISSUE OF THE DARK REPORT YOU NOW HOLD IN YOUR HANDS demonstrates the perfect intersection of two trends. One trend, transparency in health outcomes and a public expectation of reduced medical errors, is a direct threat to laboratories which fail to deliver high-quality and accur…

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First U.S. Labs Nearing ISO:15189 Accreditation

CEO SUMMARY: Laboratories, hospitals, and other health-care providers in the United States will increasingly be required to adopt quality management systems (QMS) as part of their regular operational routine. This is consistent with trends in other developed countries. Several U.S. labora…

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Independent Labs Won’t Get Medicare PQRI Bonuses

CEO SUMMARY: Medicare does not intend to make bonus payments this year to independent labs currently reporting quality information for breast and colon cancer cases. The federal claims payment system is unable to pay independent labs for participating in the federal physician quality repo…

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