Aug 10, 2020 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Study scientists identified several currently available drugs that could inhibit growth of these “streaming filaments,” which infected cells use to go after non-infected cells Like a scene from a bad horror movie, scientists have discovered that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, may be even more sinister and macabre than previously thought. The new research findings will interest those pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals who want to understand...
Aug 7, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Clinical laboratories are advised to continue developing methods for making prices for procedures available to the general public Even as an effective treatment for COVID-19 continues to elude federal healthcare agencies, Medicare officials are pressing ahead with efforts to bring about transparency in hospital healthcare pricing, including clinical laboratory procedures and prescription drugs costs. In FY 2021 Proposed Rule CMS-1735-P, titled, “Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective...
Aug 5, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Though the test initially drew ‘raves’ from Trump administration, the FDA now suggests negative results should be confirmed with an additional ‘high-sensitivity authorized SARS-CoV-2 molecular test’ This spring, as the United States attempted to jump-start a national response to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration heralded Abbott Laboratories’ five-minute test for COVID-19 as a major breakthrough. But even as the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued...
Aug 3, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Since the pandemic began, federal investigators are specifically looking for patterns of fraud in Medicare claims data for COVID-19 clinical laboratory testing Last month, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced it had been investigating trends in Medicare claims data that could indicate patterns of fraud in the billing for COVID-19 clinical laboratory tests, Modern Healthcare reported. Stretching back to at least March, fraudulent...
Jul 31, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
The fledgling test-kit company sent plastic preforms that were intended for use in the manufacturing of soda bottles, not clinical laboratory specimen tubes When is a specimen tube not a specimen tube? When it is a plastic tube made for creating soda bottles. And that may be exactly what the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received after paying $7.3 million to a fledgling Florida-based company that won a multi-million-dollar no-bid contract from the federal government for COVID-19...
Jul 29, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups should consider this another example of how CMS is taking forward steps to encourage value-based payment arrangements throughout the health system With the sky-high cost of many prescription drugs and gene therapies, it was only a matter of time before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would seek to link reimbursement for them to patient outcomes. A recent CMS proposed rule (CMS-2842-P) concerning value-based purchasing...
