May 29, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
Insurance industry claims new federal price transparency regulations cost each payer as much as $13.6 million in set up and maintenance costs Price transparency in hospital, clinical laboratory, and other service provider costs marches ever closer to reality for America’s healthcare consumers. Meanwhile, some insurers and hospital groups are working to block implementation of federal rules they argue will confuse consumers and potentially lead to higher costs. The pushback from hospital and...
May 27, 2020 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Schwan’s concerns about inaccurate or unreliable COVID-19 serology tests were supported when the FDA issued more restrictive rules for these medical laboratory tests on May 4 Last month, Roche Group CEO Severin Schwan characterized some COVID-19 antibody tests as a “disaster” and questioned the ethics of some manufacturers of these tests. During a conference call with investors about the company’s first-quarter results, Schwan said of the recently-launched COVID-19 antibody assays, “These...
May 22, 2020 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
In another example of giving consumers more direct access to medical laboratory tests, Walmart believes that convenience and lower prices can help it capture market share Retail giants continue to add healthcare services—including medical laboratory testing—to their wares. It’s a trend that pressures hospital systems, clinical laboratories, pathology groups, and primary care providers to compete for customers. And, while in most instances competition is good, many local and rural healthcare...
May 20, 2020 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
As federal and state officials ease many regulatory requirements to speed new COVID-19 serology tests to market with minimum data about performance, labs are left with important questions to answer on their own Every day, elected officials at all levels of government call for a huge expansion of COVID-19 serology testing. But, as most clinical laboratory managers and pathologists know, it is a complex undertaking for a lab to select any serological test, validate it, then run it daily in...
May 18, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
Even as some states lift stay-at-home orders, clinical laboratories and pathology groups face uncertainty about how quickly routine daily test referrals will return to normal, pre-pandemic levels Although strokes and heart attacks do not take vacations, a large and growing number of patients with serious health issues who—in normal times—would require immediate attention are not contacting providers to get needed care. Instead, they are avoiding hospital emergency rooms and clinical...
May 15, 2020 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
She worked with researchers at the University of Manchester in England to identify volatile biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease that may lead to first noninvasive screening Clinical pathologists and medical laboratories are used to working with certain biological indicators that drive diagnostics and clinical laboratory testing. Mostly, those biomarkers are contained within various liquid samples, such as blood and urine. But what if a person’s odor could accurately predict risk for certain...
