By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 6 – April 16, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: In response to information the pathology lab staff provided to the hospital’s risk manager last fall, and following a federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services inspection in February, the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is taking corrective action to fix serious deficiencies in its anatomic pathology laboratory. In reports issued in February
By R. Lewis Dark, from the Volume XXIV, No. 7 – May 15, 2017 issue
EXPERTS OFTEN PROCLAIM THAT THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM is slow to change and slow to adopt the management approaches, operational innovations, and new technologies that other industries use.
One example is adoption of the quality management techniques that W. Edwards Deming and the Japanese developed by the 1970s. Today, these are described as Lean, Six Sigma,
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXIV, No. 5 – April 3, 2017 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Being accredited to this internationally recognized standard for quality and competence communicates to clients and prospective clients that one of the nation’s largest clinical labs is committed to the highest standards of quality. Clients already knew about that commitment but now have definitive proof, ARUP said. Also, lab administrators believed that gaining accreditation
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXIII, No. 2 - February 8, 2016 issue
CEO SUMMARY: To date, a bill to restrict how health insurers use lab benefit management systems such as UnitedHealthcare’s BeaconLBS, has been favorably received in the Florida Senate. But the bill may face opposition when presented to the Senate’s Appropriations Committee. In a report, the state Office of Insurance Regulation said that restricting the use
By R. Lewis Dark, from the Volume XXIII, No. 2 - February 8, 2016 issue
ALL THE MISPLACED INCENTIVES OF A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM that uses fee-for-service to reimburse providers continue. The diverse spread of lab industry business intelligence presented in this issue of THE DARK REPORT vividly demonstrates that there continues to be a “best” and a “worst” in provider motives and behaviors during the last days of fee-for-service payment.
On
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXII NO. 16 - November 16, 2015 issue
Roper Industries, the owner of Sunquest Information Systems, Inc., acquired two more lab informatics companies. On October 26, it announced a definitive agreement to purchase Atlas Medical, familiar to lab administrators as one of the main providers of connectivity solutions for clinical labs and pathology groups in the United States. Roper also signed an agreement to
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXI NO. 17 - December 15, 2014 issue
Story no.1
SGR Fix by Congress Spawns PAMA; Lab Industry Wary of Law’s Impact
ON APRIL 1, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA signed into law the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA). As written, it has the potential to be the most impactful federal legislation on the clinical lab industry since passage of the CLIA 1988 bill.
Congress used
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXI NO. 14 - October 13, 2014 issue
Quality management systems (QMS) have made inroads in some of the organizations that accredit clinical laboratories in the United States to the requirements of CLIA. Last month, COLA of Columbia, Maryland, acknowledged that it had recertified to the standards of ISO 9001: 2008. The recertification was obtained through the British Standards Institute. COLA earned its
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXI NO. 5 – April 7, 2014 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Quietly published in the March 25 issue of the Federal Register was a notice that CMS had granted deeming authority for CLIA to the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA). This action gives laboratories in the United States a new choice to meet the accreditation requirements of CLIA. Founded in 1978, A2LA is
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXI NO. 2 – February 3, 2014 issue
CEO SUMMARY: In the United Kingdom, a window of opportunity has opened for improving the quality assurance activities of pathology and histopathology laboratories. Last week, at the Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine conference, the newly-published “Pathology Quality Assurance Review” was the focus of several keynote sessions. One recommendation is to develop key assurance indicators (KAIs) that
