By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXVI No. 2 – February 4, 2019 issue
EVEN AS SOME CLINICAL LABORATORY COMPANIES are closing or selling following the deep cuts in what Medicare pays for lab tests, three major lab organizations are building new, super-sized laboratory facilities.
Those three companies are ARUP Laboratories, DaVita Labs, and Quest Diagnostics Inc.
In September, DaVita Labs, a division of DaVita Kidney Care, opened a 150,000 square-foot
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 10 – July 9, 2018 issue
HOW THE LAB OUTREACH BUSINESSES of rural hospitals originate lab specimens and bill for lab tests is getting increased scrutiny. The reason for this rise in interest is that a growing number of rural hospitals are generating almost as much revenue from laboratory outreach testing as they get from all other inpatient services.
Most rural hospitals
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 8 – May 29, 2018 issue
IT’S THE END OF AN ERA for the strategy of being the exclusive national lab provider for a major health insurer. Last week, the two largest clinical laboratory companies announced that the 10-year-old exclusive lab testing deals each had with a different big health insurer had crumbled.
In 2007, Laboratory Corporation of America locked up an
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 6 – April 16, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Several developments have moved the case forward since December when the American Clinical Laboratory Association filed suit in federal court against the Department of Health and Human Services. Inrecent weeks, ACLA filed for summary judgment; HHS responded with its own request for summary judgment; and most recently ACLA filed its rebuttal to the
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXV No. 4 – March 5, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Pass-through billing arrangements, particularly those involving clinical laboratory tests, have long been recognized by healthcare attorneys as having great potential to violate certain federal and state laws. Despite this fact, board members of a financially-struggling community hospital went forward with a pass-through billing agreement that news accounts says committed the hospital to pay
By Jon Stone, from the Volume XXV No. 3 – February 12, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Experts in lab compliance predict that clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups must anticipate tougher enforcement of federal and state laws this year. One source of increased compliance risk for lab companies is the rising use of third-party marketing agreements. David Gee, an experienced lab industry attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine, said lab
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV, No. 2 – January 22, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: It’s a case of the client turning on the law firm. The former CEO of Health Diagnostic Laboratory is suing the law firm that advised her and her lab company on major legal matters. LeClairRyan of Richmond, Va., previously settled certain allegations with HDL’s bankruptcy trustee for $20.375 million. Now Mallory hopes to
This is an excerpt from a 2,400-word article in the Nov. 20, 2017 issue of THE DARK REPORT. The complete article is available for a limited time to all readers, and available at all times to paid members of the Dark Intelligence Group.
CEO SUMMARY: Here at the dawn of the new era of value-based
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXIV, No. 16 – November 20, 2017 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Just as Nero is reputed to have fiddled while Rome burned, officials at CMS seem to be doing their own fiddling as their planned deep price cuts to Medicare Part B lab tests could begin driving lab companies out of business. In recent weeks, the owners of two lab companies decided to sell
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXIV, No. 16 – November 20, 2017 issue
CEO SUMMARY: With each passing year, the primary role of hospital and health system labs evolves in a different direction than that of independent lab companies. This trend is a response to the creation of integrated delivery networks paid on value and how they are scored on their ability to keep patients out of hospitals
