TAG:
laboratory administrator
Payers Move to Pre-Authorize Expensive Genetic Tests
CEO Summary: Pre-authorization of expensive genetic and molecular tests is fast-becoming a priority for most of the nation’s health insurers. For clinical labs and pathology groups that don’t respond, this trend is a threat. On the other hand, because payers need all the skil…
New “Meaningful Use” Rules Are Easier on Docs
CEO SUMMARY: The federal government will spend $20 billion over the next four years to encourage every physician to use an electronic medical record (EMR) system. For labs, this increase in connectivity represents a significant marketing opportunity. However, the new federal rule…
Actions of Ex-Employees Can Breach Lab Security
CEO SUMMARY: Lab managers should take steps to protect patient data and proprietary information. This includes customer lists, payer contracts, customer-specific pricing, sales force compensation information, lab testing intellectual property, and protected health information. Te…
Patient Privacy Laws Create Legal Risk for Labs
CEO SUMMARY: Before the nation’s healthcare system can achieve the integrated universal EHR, it must fix the crazy contradictions in state and federal laws governing patient privacy. There is discordance between federal law and state law that defines the role and responsibility…
Better Blood Utilization Reduces Costs by 29%
CEO SUMMARY: Use of an innovative two-pronged approach helped University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital rein in runaway cost increases in blood products. Not only did it achieve annual savings of $3.5 million in three years—a 29% reduction—but it increased blood donations …
Texas Doctors Dropping Out of Medicare
IN A MAJOR STORY LAST WEEK, the Houston Chronicle reported that the rate of Texas physicians who are dropping the Medicare program has increased 30-fold in 2010 compared to 2006. These findings indicate the level of “no confidence” that growing numbers of physicians have about the Medicare progra…
Taming the Blood Beast With Better Utilization
CEO SUMMARY: For hospital labs, explosive increases in the cost of blood products is a budget buster. At St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital, a multi-year blood management program is paying big dividends. Patient safety has improved, even as utilization of blood dropped by 7,000 un…
AG Jerry Brown Settles With Westcliff Med Labs
CEO SUMMARY: In California, Attorney General Jerry Brown is making progress in the whistleblower lawsuit alleging that seven lab companies in California violated state law by not giving Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, the same lowest lab test prices they extend to physi…
Sonic Health Wins Irish Contract for Pap Testing
CEO SUMMARY: Evidently the Irish Health Service is satisfied with its decision to outsource all the nation’s cervical cancer screening tests. In recent weeks, it announced that two international laboratory companies would handle Pap testing for the next two years. Sonic Healthc…
Optimism & Opportunity at Executive War College
CEO SUMMARY: Instead of our annual review of key speakers as a source of emerging trends and common themes, this year we assess the attitudes, opinions, and activities of the pathologists, laboratory administrators, managers, and industry executives in attendance at the 15th Annu…
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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