At the 2025 Executive War College, general session speakers offer strategies on using data and care gaps to boost new approaches
Sluggish healthcare spending and tighter consumer wallets have sped up the need for new clinical laboratory business models.
That urgent theme came through loud and clear during opening general sessions at the 2025 Executive War College on Diagnostics, Clinical Laboratory, and Pathology Management, which began on Tuesday in New Orleans.
For the past 14 years, healthcare spending as a percentage of US gross domestic product has stayed flat—17.2% in 2010 compared to 17.8% in 2024—according to numbers presented by Robert Michel, editor-in-chief of Dark Daily and founder of the Executive War College.
“This is not auspicious for either the vendor side of the clinical laboratory business or providers,” Michel told attendees during the conference’s opening session.
“Clinical laboratories all must watch for opportunities to earn revenue through new business models,” said Robert Michel (above), editor-in-chief of Dark Daily. Michel spoke during a general session at the 2025 Executive War College on Diagnostics, Clinical Laboratory, and Pathology Management in New Orleans. (Photo copyright: LabX.)
Spending Blockades Will Push New Business Models for Labs
Michel ran through a series of other, similarly grim statistics that put hard numbers on trends that many laboratory executives and owners already suspected:
- Half of Americans have less than $500 in a savings account, according to a January 2025 survey by GOBankingRates.com. Those people face tough financial decisions, including whether to postpone healthcare testing and treatment, Michel said.
- Growth in Medicare spending by beneficiary generally stopped in 2010 and remained flat at around $12,500 per beneficiary as of 2023.
“Social Security and Medicaid are going to go broke sooner rather than later,” Michel predicted. “Congress has seen this problem and not reacted.”
Such financial challenges will force the need for new clinical laboratory business models. Among the key areas that will inspire these models are diagnostic data and technology, said Sam Terese, CEO and president at Alverno Laboratories, during his general session at the Executive War College.
“It comes back to using data to predict disease,” Terese explained. “If you can prevent someone from getting seriously ill, you will lower the cost of care.”
Terese pointed out the need to effectively use artificial intelligence (AI) to digest the massive amount of clinical data that labs sit on.
Another New Clinical Laboratory Business Model: Closing Care Gaps
Diagnostic laboratories should also be in the business of identifying care gaps among their patients and consumers. One subset to consider is diabetic and prediabetic people.
“Can the lab identify an A1C patient who should have come in to see their doctor based on the test result?” Michel asked. That type of approach raises the value of a lab test beyond just the result it produced, he added.
During another general session, Sonora Quest Laboratories showed how it determines risk stratification for colorectal cancer by using an algorithm that considers a patient’s age, gender, and minimum of two complete blood count test results to flag at-risk people.
“We’re able to get information to physicians to close that care gap,” said Jen Umscheid, senior director of quality, innovation, and performance excellence at Sonora Quest.
The Executive War College continues through Thursday, with an expected attendance of just over 1,000 delegates, speakers, and vendor representatives. Friday’s Dark Daily will explore how AI topics played out among curious attendees.
—Scott Wallask
