By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXVI No. 1 – January 14, 2019 issue
LAST MONTH the American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) filed an appeal in its case against the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In its court filing, the ACLA said that a federal district court judge erred in her ruling against the lab association.
The district court misinterpreted the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXVI No. 1 – January 14, 2019 issue
NEW CLINICAL LABORATORY CONTRACTING INITIATIVES are planned at UnitedHealthcare (UHC), including the launch of a preferred laboratory network this summer.
The nation’s largest health insurer with 49 million beneficiaries, UHC announced in May that it would add Quest Diagnostics as an in-network lab provider effective Jan. 1, and retain Laboratory Corporation of America as a network
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXVI No. 1 – January 14, 2019 issue
CEO SUMMARY: With so many market forces working against the economic interests of clinical laboratories, it is essential that all labs develop appropriate strategies designed to sustain the quality of laboratory testing services and the financial integrity of the laboratory organization. In this intelligence briefing, XIFIN, Inc.’s CEO, Lâle White, explains five strategies that are
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXVI No. 1 – January 14, 2019 issue
CEO SUMMARY: This will be one of the most challenging years facing the clinical lab industry since the early 1990s, when closed panel HMOs were the disruptive force that generated deep cuts in lab test prices. However, unlike HMOs of that era, the CMS scheme to collect private payer lab test prices and use that
By Robert Michel, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
Pathologists at the Houston Methodist health system created a website that tracks confirmed flu cases in real time. It is located at: https://flu.houstonmethodist.org and uses epidemiology data from the eight hospitals in the health system. The system updates every morning by polling the previous day’s data in the laboratory information system. Wesley Long, MD, an Assistant
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: Sonic Healthcare, Ltd., announced that it would pay $540 million—a multiple of 9.2 times EBITDA—to acquire Aurora Diagnostics, the anatomic pathology company based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Sonic will gain 32 pathology practice sites and add 220 pathologists to its network of regional clinical and pathology laboratories. The transaction marks the end
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: With the year end approaching, lab buyers and sellers are working to finalize deals that may have been in discussion for months. The first big lab acquisition for this season came on Nov. 27, when Quest Diagnostics announced it was acquiring Boyce and Bynum Pathology Laboratories of Columbia, Mo. The pathologists will keep
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: By cutting out smaller, regional labs, UnitedHealthcare appears to want to shift an unknown percentage of its lab test volume to Quest Diagnostics Inc., which it recently restored to its national provider network. Clinical lab directors should be concerned about this development because UHC is the nation’s largest health insurer and because other
By Mary Van Doren, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
CEO SUMMARY: This year’s list of the Top 10 Lab Industry Stories for 2018 is dominated by new directives from Medicare and private health insurers, as well as significant decisions by federal courts. Collectively, these developments create new compliance risks for all clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups. What is more notable about these top
By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXV No. 18 – December 24, 2018 issue
TO SHORTEN THE TIME FOR CANCER DIAGNOSES, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) will open five new digital pathology and imaging centers that will use artificial intelligence. The digital pathology and imaging centers will open in Coventry, Glasgow, Leeds, London, and Oxford.
Last month, the UK government announced that it will invest £50 million ($68.9
