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quality improvement

To Add Value, Focus on Patient Care

FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, and particularly since Congress passed the Patient Access to Medicare Act in 2014, clinical labs have focused on controlling costs, as they should. After all, PAMA calls …

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Pathologist’s Error and Hospital’s Cover-up Lead to CMS Investigation

CEO SUMMARY: In the latest chapter of an explosive case at the University of Kansas Medical Center that includes claims of a cancer misdiagnosis, an unnecessary surgery, and a cover-up that involves the former chair of pathology, the patient has sued for fraud, negligence, and civil consp…

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Use of Creatinine to Improve Diagnosis, Treatment of AKI

INNOVATIVE CLINICAL LABS are making significant changes to accommodate the shift from volume to values. In one change, they are collaborating with clinicians to use lab test data to improve patient outcomes. In another, they are collecting the clinical data from these efforts to publish the outcomes…

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ARUP Laboratories Earns CAP’s ISO 15189 Accreditation

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 commitmen…

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Health Insurers Want More Data On Clinical Utility of Molecular, Genetic Tests

CEO SUMMARY: Genetic tests that lack two essentials are troublesome for the nation’s health insurers. Those essentials are clinical validity and clinical utility. During a recent webinar, two executives from major health insurers stressed the need for genetic testing labs to provide acc…

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University of Michigan Pathologists Bet on Patient-Centered Care

CEO SUMMARY: At the University of Michigan Medical Center, the Department of Pathology is learning new ways to add value that include face-to-face meetings with patients as part of UMMC’s patient- and family-centered care initiative. One lesson learned is that patients appreciate the op…

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Lab, Emergency Department at Cleveland Clinic Collaborate to Reduce Hemolysis Rates

CEO SUMMARY: Two years ago, the rate of hemolysis in blood drawn in the Cleveland Clinic’s Emergency Department was about nine times higher than the ASCP recommended rate of 2%. With a two-year cooperative agreement and funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

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Phlebotomy Contributes To Drop in Sepsis Mortality

CEO SUMMARY: When Intermountain Healthcare began a quality improvement program to address sepsis, its sepsis mortality rate was 20.2%, among the lowest in the nation. By 2007, all 15 of its hospitals had deployed this program. A breakthrough came in recent years, when a phlebotomist was a…

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Healthcare’s Ongoing Struggle: Patients or Profits?

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…

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Newsmaker Interview: Matthew Hawkins

CEO SUMMARY: By now, most pathologists and clinical laboratory administrators recognize that effective use of information technology will be a critical success factor as healthcare systems transform to do population health management and to use “big data” with value-based payment mode…

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