Federal Advisory Committee Seeks Public Comments on Revising CLIA Regulations, says Keynote Speaker at 13th Annual Lab Quality Confab in Atlanta

Oct 16, 2019 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Pathology, Managed Care Contracts & Payer Reimbursement, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily

At The Dark Report’s annual Lab Quality Confab for clinical laboratory administrators, managers, and quality team members, experts outline how disruption in healthcare requires labs to improve processes and cut costs ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2019—Clinical laboratory professionals have a chance to advise the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how the federal government could revise the regulations under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). That’s...

University of Edinburgh Study Finds Antimicrobial Bacteria in Hospital Wastewater in Research That Has Implications for Microbiologists

Oct 11, 2019 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology

The highly infectious bacteria can survive treatment at local sewage plants and enter the food chain of surrounding populations, the study revealed Researchers at the University of Edinburgh (UE) in Scotland found large amounts of antimicrobial-resistance (AMR) genes in hospital wastewater. These findings will be of interest to microbiologists and clinical laboratory managers, as the scientists used metagenomics to learn “how abundances of AMR genes in hospital wastewater are related to...

Clinical Laboratory Leaders Agree: Showing Value Is More Important than Ever as Healthcare Transitions Away from Fee-for Service Reimbursement

Sep 25, 2019 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing, Laboratory Testing, Managed Care Contracts & Payer Reimbursement, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily

How medical laboratories can show value through process improvement methods and analytics will be among many key topics presented at the upcoming Lab Quality Confab conference Quality management is the clinical laboratory’s best strategy for surviving and thriving in this era of shrinking lab budgets, PAMA price cuts, and value-based payment. In fact, the actions laboratories take in the next few months will set the course for their path to clinical success and financial sustainability in 2020...

HHS Announces Culpability Limits for HIPAA Violations, Drops Annual Fines Owed by Providers

Sep 16, 2019 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology

Clinical laboratories need to understand how their patients’ protected health information is being used and secured by vendors to avert data breaches and HHS penalties Most readers of The Dark Report, the sister publication to the Dark Daily, are aware that more than 24-million clinical laboratory patients had their protected health information (PHI) stolen during several recent data breaches involving multiple medical laboratory companies. The first public statements made by clinical lab...

Senior Citizens on Medicare Are Particularly Vulnerable to New Scams Involving Fraudulent Genetic Test Orders

Sep 11, 2019 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations

Medical fraudsters are targeting Medicare recipients with schemes to persuade them to agree to genetic tests advertised as informing them if they are predisposed to specific chronic diseases or cancer Medicare scams involving orders for unnecessary, expensive testing are not new. However, clinical laboratory managers and anatomic pathologists need to be aware—particularly those working in hospital and health system labs—that an entirely new wave of fraud involving medical laboratory testing is...

Potentially Fatal Fungus Invades Hospitals and Public Is Not Informed

Aug 26, 2019 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing

Clinical laboratories and microbiologists will want to be on the alert for this deadly infectious agent that has killed patients through blood infections Healthcare continues to struggle with the issue of how much to disclose to the public when new and deadly infectious agents are identified in a limited number of patients. Timely disclosure of new pathogens is a matter of great concern to clinical laboratory scientists, microbiologists, and clinical pathologists because their laboratories get...