TAG:
managed care contracting
Payers Asking for Repayment When Labs Waive Fees
CEO SUMMARY: Health insurers appear to have stepped up their efforts to warn clinical laboratories not to waive patients’ fees in return for specimen referrals. Consultants also say that payers are increasing enforcement efforts. There are cases where, when insurers discover labs have n…
UnitedHealthcare Comments on Labs’ Use of “Fee Waivers”
PATHOLOGISTS AND LAB SCIENTISTS are familiar with the well-known scientific principle that, “for every action, there is a reaction.” This principle also holds true for the managed care contracting practices of the two national laboratory companies. One action that is the subject of this story is…
State of Clinical Lab Industry Likely to Be Mixed in 2016
CEO SUMMARY: Over the next 24 months, it will be essential for every clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology group to develop clinical and financial strategies that meet the changing needs of health insurers, hospitals and health systems, physicians, and patients. THE DARK REPORT provi…
Will 2016 Bring Opportunity or Tribulations for Labs?
WE ARE JUST ABOUT EIGHT WEEKS FROM THE ADVENT OF 2016. Given the rapid transformation of healthcare that continues to unfold, it is timely to assess how clinical labs and pathology groups are likely to fare during the coming year. On the plus side, the ongoing evolution toward integration of clinica…
Deep-Discount Lab Prices to Haunt All California Labs
FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, THE CLINICAL LAB INDUSTRY been marked by a fundamental schism. On one side of the schism are the public lab companies that have aggressively used deeply-discounted loss-leader pricing practices when negotiating managed care contracts to capture market share. On the other si…
Humana Reduces Number of Labs in its Networks
CEO SUMMARY: In Ohio, a lab director said his lab was not informed directly about its exclusion from the Humana lab network. Lab officials got the word from their client physicians. In Texas, another lab director said Humana cut 35 lab contracts, reportedly because the insurer wanted to s…
Payer Contracts and Labs’ Access to Patients
ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT TRENDS IN RECENT YEARS is the exclusion of community lab companies and local pathology groups from a growing number of health insurer networks. In simplest terms, if a community lab is denied network provider status by the major payers in its region, it loses access to the…
Philly Blue Cross Contract: LabCorp In; Quest Out
CEO SUMMARY: Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia decided to select Laboratory Corporation of America for its new eight-year managed care contract that took effect on July 1. However, the real story is the aggressive bidding war between the two national labs. Sources say LabCorp bid an…
In this Philadelphia Story, LabCorp Uses 2007 Script
CEO SUMMARY: There’s a managed care contracting play-book that seems to be working better for Laboratory Corporation of America than it does for Quest Diagnostics Inc. On July 1, LabCorp became the exclusive national lab provider for Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia. For the past…
Test Utilization Targeted by UnitedHealth, LabCorp
CEO SUMMARY: Many independent laboratories serving patients in Florida are unhappy about the decision by UnitedHealth (UNH) to initiate a pilot program that calls for LabCorp’s BeaconLBS subsidiary to handle prior authorization for certain lab tests. UNH’s laboratory benefit managemen…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXI, No. 5 – April 8, 2024
The fragmentation of consumer markets is reflected in clinical lab services, and The Dark Report examines this trend and how it will impact labs in the coming years. Also, The Dark Report notes that the FDA has issued a controversial memo to reclassify many high-risk IVD assays.
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