Last Friday, at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania, members of the health systems’s authority board were given tours of the new $63.4 million clinical laboratory facility. It is scheduled to open on May 4 and will feature the latest state-of-the art analyzers and lab automation systems. Located in a new building of 162,378 square feet, it will be home to more than 350 lab employees.
Most Labs in Dubai Fail Proficiency Tests
In Dubai, efforts by government officials to raise quality standards are taking much longer than anticipated. Last week, the Kaleej Times reported that a majority of clinical laboratories in the Gulf State are repeatedly failing proficiency testing. In 2010, the Dubai Health Authority made it mandatory that all clinical laboratories earn accreditation to ISO 15189. It later set a deadline of December 31, 2012, for labs to meet this requirement. According to news accounts, of 191 labs in the nation, just 66 labs have earned accreditation, with 73 more labs undergoing the accreditation process. Proficiency testing failures are one reason why many labs in Dubai have yet to become accredited to ISO 15198. “…we face this big question-for how long are we going to keep visiting them for inspections when they [labs] keep failing,” observed Prabhakar Golkonda, Principal Accreditation Officer at the Dubai Accreditation Center. (DAC) “If a lab does not succeed in the third visit, there are serious problems in the lab which directly affect the quality of patient care and which should stop it from working.” DAC is a signatory to the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC).
TRANSITIONS
Sonic Healthcare USA, based in Austin, Texas, has a new CEO. Pathologist Thomas P. Lohmann, M.D. assumed those duties in December. Lohmann held leadership positions and lab directorships at Baylor Scott & White Health, med fusion, Quintiles Laboratories, and Ochsner Foundation Hospital and Clinics.
ERRATA
In the previous issue of THE DARK REPORT, in a story about the new clinical laboratory that PerkinElmer opened in Suzhou, China, the proper spelling of the 2009 acquisition is Sym-Bio Lifescience Co., Ltd. The price paid for the acquisition was $67.5 million.
Dark Daily Update
Have you caught the latest e-briefings from DARK Daily? If so, then you’d know about…
…how, for Meaningful Use Stage Two, only 547 EHR products were certified at the end of 2014. This compares with 1,956 ambulatory “complete” EHRs certified in 2011! Many physicians may now be using non-compliant EHRs.
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That’s all the insider intelligence for this report. Look for the next briefing on Monday, April 20, 2015.
