TAG:
laboratory test
Can Clinical Laboratories Adjust To ‘New’ Healthcare System?
CEO SUMMARY: Month by month, there is increased clarity in the path the American healthcare system will follow as hospitals, health systems, and physicians integrate clinical care, manage populations, and practice personalized and precision medicine. While these changes play out, clinical…
October 17, 2016 Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News
Quebec’s provincial health authority is moving forward with what may be one of the largest consolidations of clinical laboratory testing undertaken in North America during the past 30 years. The goal is to bring the lab testing currently done in as many as 500 locations throughout the province int…
How Reference Pricing Encourages Patients to Help Cut Cost of Care
USE OF REFERENCE PRICING by Safeway to lower the cost of clinical laboratory tests was the subject of a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine in July. In a special issue, THE DARK REPORT analyzed the study, which showed that reference-based pricing …
Sonora Quest PSCs in Safeway Stores Prove Popular with Consumers
CEO SUMMARY: In a pilot program started in November 2015, Sonora Quest Laboratories built patient service centers in two Safeway grocery stores. That program went so well that patients filled available appointments in a matter of weeks. Sonora Quest even reported an increase in the number…
UnitedHealthcare to Bring BeaconLBS to Texas
CEO SUMMARY: With a quiet announcement this month that it was bringing its laboratory benefit management program to Texas on March 1, 2017, UnitedHealthcare is taking on a big challenge. Enrollment in UHC’s commercial plans in Texas is 4.3 million. That is twice the two million commerci…
Cepheid, Sequenom Acquisitions Further Consolidate Lab Testing
TWO ACQUISITIONS FURTHER consolidated the clinical laboratory testing industry in recent weeks. The acquired companies were Sequenom and Cepheid. Sequenom went first. On July 27, Laboratory Corporation of America announced an agreement to acquire …
Meet the Medical Technologist Who Does Daily Rounds in the Hospital
TO MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM VOLUME TO VALUE, pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists are beginning to leave the four walls of their labs to engage clinicians in ways that add value to the lab tests performed on their patients. That’s exactly what one medical technologist is doing in a comm…
Why Lab Prices Declined 32% During 3-Year Study
CEO SUMMARY: Researchers studied the effect reference pricing had on an employer’s efforts to steer consumers to low-cost clinical labs. The study showed that patients were particularly sensitive to lab test prices—in part because those prices varied widely. Over the course of the …
Alert to All Labs: Beware Of ‘Reference Pricing’
CEO SUMMARY: “Reference pricing” does not refer to how a lab negotiates prices with its reference lab! Rather, reference pricing describes a specific approach to health plan benefits that incentivizes the consumer to choose lower-cost providers while allowing that consumer to still us…
Labs Caught Between Employer Hammer, Payer Anvil
STARTING ON JANUARY 1, 2017, THE CLINICAL LABORATORY INDUSTRY will undergo a new experiment in price-setting (and price-cutting) by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. On that date, certain labs must begin reporting market price data for each test and each payer…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXIII, No. 4 – March 23, 2026
A federal court ruling has established a safe harbor for clinical labs when they run tests ordered by physicians. Lab leaders should examine this briefing for pitfalls. Also, it turns out that providers may be ordering inappropriate vitamin D tests, according to one expert.
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