As mergers and acquisitions of large-scale hospital systems continue, their clinical laboratories feel the pressure of deteriorating finances and ongoing staff shortages
In response to the latest National Hospital Flash Report from Kaufman Hall, the financial/performance consulting firm’s Senior Vice President, Eric Swanson, wrote that 2022 was “shaping up to be one of the worst financial years on record for hospitals.
“Expense pressures—particularly with the cost of labor—outpaced revenues and drove poor performance [in hospitals]. While emergency department visits and operating room minutes increased slightly, hospitals struggled to discharge patients due to internal staffing shortages and shortages at post-acute facilities,” Swanson noted.
Like their parent organizations, hospital and health system-based medical laboratories are dealing with ongoing staffing shortages, which Dark Daily covered extensively in multiple ebriefings.
Non-profit healthcare systems are particularly hard hit, leading to merger/acquisition deals that continue the trend of hospital consolidation.
“Consolidation will continue. Here’s the scary part. The old solutions of jacking up treatment volumes and commercial payment rates aren’t working. Evidence of business model failure abounds. A fiscal storm is raging,” David Johnson, CEO, 4sight Health, wrote in an article for the Healthcare Financial Management Association. The results of these business failures have a direct impact on hospital-based medical laboratories as well as clinical laboratories in surrounding areas that service a health system’s physicians. (Photo copyright: 4sight Health.)
The numbers speak volumes. Looking at financial statements from 2022, Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, CommonSpirit Health, Providence, and Mass General Brigham all posted losses of more than $316 million dollars, the HFMA series noted. Two in that group (CommonSpirit and Providence) posted losses over $1.1 billion. Providence’s losses represented only nine months of data from 2022.
So, what’s the problem? In another HFMA article titled, “The End of Traditional Nonprofit Healthcare Business Models?” Johnson wrote, “Even in the best of times, the nonprofit hospital business model has never been robust. Hospitals are capital-intensive, labor-intensive, highly-regulated, low-margin businesses that require high-cost facilities and highly expert personnel to operate.
“Competing mission and business priorities make running nonprofit hospitals even more difficult,” he added. “The existential question is whether current operating losses at nonprofit health systems are aberrant or indicate a broader collapse of their models. I believe it’s the latter. Structural weaknesses, combined with pernicious macro forces, make this a period of unprecedented challenge for nonprofit providers.”
In his “Cracks in the Foundation” series, Johnson lists five “deeply embedded defects in current nonprofit business models.” They are:
Artificial economics
Needs-services mismatch
Brittle business models
Regulatory headwinds
Inadequate leadership
“Under pressure, health systems are struggling to right the ship, but they are defaulting to old habits,” Johnson wrote. “They’re chasing volume and rates under fee-for-service (FFS) medicine. While this has worked in the past, it is not a viable long-term strategy. Powerful macro forces are aligning against healthcare business practices. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.”
This chart, taken from 4sight Health CEO David Johnson’s HFMA article, shows the five large health systems that showed operating losses in 2022. The numbers displayed are drawn from each health system’s publicly released financial statements for the periods shown, HFMA noted. (Graphic copyright: Healthcare Financial Management Association.)
Deteriorating Outlook for Health Systems
Increased expenses for labor and supplies paired with inflation is what a 2022 Fitch Ratings report cited as contributing to a “‘deteriorating’ outlook for systems,” Healthcare Dive reported.
“Labor will remain the largest hurdle for hospitals this year even as they struggle with inflation and spiking COVID-19 admissions that can dent revenue. The labor story just dwarfs the inflation story,” financial analyst Kevin Holloran, Senior Director and Sector Leader USPF Healthcare at Fitch Ratings, told Healthcare Dive.
Holloran has worked for Fitch since 2017, joining after 14 years at S/P Global Ratings. He has 20-years experience in the healthcare sector.
Nonprofit hospitals that posted COVID-19-related operating losses are struggling with higher costs for labor and supplies while navigating declining and neutral admission volumes, Healthcare Dive noted, citing that healthcare systems have turned to staffing agencies and contracted labor to counter the loss of burned-out employees who go on strike or who leave healthcare entirely. On a positive note, Holloran sees contract labor use decreasing in the future.
What’s Next?
There’s a steep road ahead for nonprofits but Holloran see positive changes. “We are beginning to come out of the worst of it,” he told Healthcare Dive. However, he added, “Hospitals should not expect to ‘grow [their] way out’ of soaring labor expenses by raising revenues or increasing hospital admissions.”
Like Johnson, Holloran stressed the importance of looking for long-term solutions. With rising expenses, declining revenues, and increased labor costs projected to continue for years, “hospitals are putting recruiting and retention efforts ‘on steroids’ amid challenges,” he noted.
One coming improvement is that hospitals “can look toward commercial payer contracts to ease high expenses,” Holloran predicted.
“Payer contracts fall in the approximately 25% to 30% of non-fixed revenue that hospitals have the ability to control. … The ratings agency [Fitch] now expects to see a shift from long-term contracts to single-year contracts as nonprofits attempt to ease expenses,” Healthcare Dive noted.
It appears that, for the foreseeable future, clinical laboratories will continue to feel the pressures brought on by mergers and acquisitions as the healthcare industry struggles to find solutions to the economic downturn and loss of qualified staff following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Expect there to be more clinical laboratory testing at pharmacies as retail pharmacy chains expand their primary care offerings
Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA) of Deerfield, Illinois, continues to expand its primary care footprint with VillageMD’s latest acquisition of Starling Physicians, a multi-specialty physicians group with 30 locations in Connecticut, according to a VillageMD news release. Walgreens is the majority owner of VillageMD, which now has more than 700 medical centers, Healthcare Dive noted.
This deal continues the trend of corporations acquiring physician practices. Already, the majority of physicians are employees, not partners in a private practice physician group. Under corporate ownership, these physician groups often decide to change their clinical laboratory providers. For that reason, managers and pathologists at local medical laboratories will want to explore how they might provide daily lab testing services to the corporate owners of these primary care clinics.
The Hartford Business Journal called VillageMD’s acquisition of Starling Physicians—which is subject to a state investigation for possible certificate-of-need requirement—one of Connecticut’s “more high-profile healthcare merger and acquisition deals in Connecticut in recent years.”
The Starling Physicians group acquisition comes just a few months after
VillageMD paid $8.9 billion for Summit Health-CityMD of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, with primary care services in the Northeast and Oregon. Walgreens invested $3.5 billion in that transaction, a Summit Health news release noted.
These acquisitions by Walgreens/VillageMD provide opportunities for local clinical laboratories to serve the physicians in these practices, though the operations may have a different patient flow and work process than traditional family practice clinics located in medical offices around community hospitals.
“Starling shares our vision of being a physician-led model and they provide care in a compassionate and exceptional way to all the patients they serve. By integrating primary care with specialty care, we are able to optimize access to high-quality care for our patients,” said Tim Barry (above), CEO and Chair of VillageMD in the news release. “This is a natural extension of our growth in the Northeast, including our recent acquisition of Summit Health-CityMD. Together, we are transforming the way healthcare is delivered in the United States.” Clinical laboratories in these areas will want to develop a strategy for serving the physicians practicing at these non-traditional locations. (Photo copyright: The Business Journals.)
Primary Care at Retail Locations a Growing Trend
Dark Daily and its sister publication The Dark Report have reported extensively on the growing trend by pharmacy chains and other retail superstores to add primary care services to their footprint.
In “By 2027, Walgreens Wants 1,000 Primary Care Clinics,” The Dark Report covered how Walgreens had disclosed that it would spend $5.2 billion to acquire a 63% interest to become the majority owner of VillageMD. Fierce Healthcare reported that “[Walgreens] planned to open at least 600 Village Medical at Walgreens primary-care practices across the country by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027.”
VillageMD is a primary care provider with same-day appointments, telehealth virtual visits, in-home care, and clinical laboratory diagnostic testing such as blood tests and urinalysis. Many VillageMD practices are located in buildings next door to Walgreens sites throughout the United States. (Photo copyright: Walgreens.)
Other Retailers Investing in Primary Care
Other retailers have recently taken deeper dives into healthcare as well.
According to Forbes, “The acquisition comes amid a flurry of acquisitions across the US for doctor practices, which are being purchased at an unprecedented pace by large retailers like Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health, Amazon, and Walmart. Meanwhile, medical care providers owned by health insurers like UnitedHealth Group’s Optum and Cigna’s Evernorth are also in the doctor practice bidding war.”
And in February, CVS announced plans to acquire for $10.6 billion Oak Street Health, a Chicago-based primary care company with 169 medical centers across 21 states that plans to have more than 300 centers by 2026.
Do Clinical Laboratories Want Retail Customers?
The question of whether clinical laboratories should pursue retail customers is at this point academic. Consumer demand is driving the change and labs that don’t keep up may be left behind.
“The trend of putting full-service primary care clinics in retail pharmacies is a significant development for the clinical laboratory industry,” wrote Robert Michel, Editor-in-Chief of Dark Daily and The Dark Report. “These clinics will need clinical lab tests and can be expected to shift patients away from traditional medical clinic sites for two reasons—lower price and convenience—since this new generation of primary care clinics will be located around the corner from where people live and work.”
Thus, healthcare system laboratories or large reference labs may want to reach out to Walgreens, CVS, Amazon, and Walmart for test referrals. These and other large retailers are investing heavily in the belief that consumers will continue to seek convenience in their healthcare.
The deal will enable Crosscope’s digital pathology platform to layer around Clarapath’s histology automation hardware, a combination that could improve quality and efficiencies in diagnostic services for future customers, according to a Clarapath press release.
Clarapath’s goal with its products is to automate certain manual processes in histology laboratories, while at the same time reducing variability in how specimens are processed and produced into glass slides. In an exclusive interview with Dark Daily, Eric Feinstein, CEO and President at Clarapath said he believes the resulting data about these activities can drive further changes.
“A histotechnologist turns a microtome wheel and makes decisions about a piece of tissue in real time,” noted Feinstein, who will speak at the Executive War College on Diagnostics, Clinical Laboratory, and Pathology Management on April 25-26 in New Orleans. “All of that real-time data isn’t captured. Imagine if we could take all of that data from thousands of histotechnologists who are cutting every day and aggregate it. Then you could start drawing definitive conclusions about best practices.”
“Clarapath’s foundation is about creating consistency and standardizing steps in histology—and uncovering the data that you need in order to accomplish those goals as a whole system,” Eric Feinstein (above), CEO and President at Clarapath told Dark Daily. “A histology lab’s workflow—from when the tissue comes in to when the glass slide is produced—should all be connected.” Many processes in histology and anatomic pathology continue to be manual. Automated solutions can contribute to improved productivity and reducing variability in how individual specimens are processed. (Photo copyright: Clarapath.)
Details Behind Clarapath’s Deal to Acquire Crosscope
As part of its acquisition, Clarapath of Hawthorne, New York, has retained all of Crosscope’s employees, who are located in Mountain View, California, and Bombay, India. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Clarapath’s flagship histology automation product is SectionStar, a tissue sectioning and transfer system designed to automate inefficient and manual activities in slide processing. The device offers faster and more efficient sample processing while reducing human involvement. Clarapath expects SectionStar be on the market in 2023. The company is currently taking pre-orders.
Meanwhile, Crosscope developed Crosscope Dx, a turnkey digital pathology solution that provides workflow tools and slide management as well as AI and machine learning to assist pathologists with their medical decision-making and diagnoses.
Adoption of Digital Pathology and Automation Can Be Challenging
Digital pathology has experienced growing popularity in the post-COVID-19 pandemic world. This is not only because remote pathology case reviews have become increasingly acceptable to physicians but also because of the ongoing shortages in clinical laboratory staffing.
“A pain point today for clinicians and laboratories is labor. That’s across the board,” Feinstein said. “We can help solve that with SectionStar.”
Feinstein does not believe adoption of digital pathology and histology automation is proceeding slowly, but he does acknowledge barriers to healthcare organizations installing the technologies.
“There are lots of little things that—from a workflow perspective—people have outsized expectations about,” he explained. “Clinicians and administrators are not used to innovating in a product sense. They may be innovating on how they deliver care or treatment pathways, but they’re not used to developing an engineering product and going through alpha and beta stages. That makes adopting new technology challenging.”
Medical laboratory managers and pathologists interested in pursuing histology automation and digital pathology should first determine what processes are sub-optimal or would benefit from the standardization hardware and software can offer. Being able to articulate those gains can help build the case for a return on investment to decision-makers.
Another resource to consider: Feinstein will speak about innovations for remote histology laboratory workers at the upcoming Executive War College for Clinical Laboratory, Diagnostics, and Pathology Management on April 25-26 in New Orleans. His session is titled, “Re-engineering the Classic Histology Laboratory: Enabling the Remote Histotechnologist with New Tools That Improve Productivity, Automate Processes, and Protect Quality.”
Faulkner was surpassed on Forbes’ list only by roofing material magnate Diane Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply Co., whose net worth of $11 billion puts her squarely in the top spot.
Richest Self-Made Women in Healthcare
Becker’s Hospital Review highlighted the seven richest “self-made” women who ran healthcare-related companies. They include:
Judith Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic, ranked 2nd, net worth $6.5 billion.
Alice Schwartz, co-founder of Bio-Rad Laboratories, ranked 10th, net worth $2.9 billion.
Heather Hasson and Trina Spear, co-founders and co-CEOs of FIGS (direct-to-consumer healthcare apparel and scrubs), ranked 50th and 52nd, net worth $625 million and $600 million respectively.
Also listed by Forbes was Anne Wojcicki, CEO and founder of 23andMe, a personal genomics and biotechnology company. Wojcicki’s net worth of $1.1 billion puts her in the 25th position, according to Forbes.
In “Genetic Test Company 23andMe Completes Merger with Richard Branson’s VG Acquisition Corp., Stock Now Trades on NASDAQ,” Dark Daily noted that since the Sunnyvale, Calif. direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company will now be filing quarterly earnings reports, pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will have the opportunity to learn more about how 23andMe serves the consumer market for genetic types and how it is generating revenue from its huge database containing the genetic sequences from millions of people.
Judith Faulkner (left), founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corp., and Alice Schwartz (right), co-founder of Bio-Rad Laboratories, ranked 2nd and 10th respectively in Forbes’ list of the top 100 richest self-made women. In healthcare, Faulkner ranks 1st and Schwartz 2nd. Clinical laboratory personnel will likely be familiar with Epic Beaker, which, according to Healthcare IT Leaders, “is Epic’s laboratory information system (LIS) for hospitals, clinics, patient service centers, and reference labs. The software supports common workflows for clinical pathology (CP) labs as well as anatomic pathology (AP) labs.” (Photo copyrights: HIT Consultant/Science History Institute.)
“I always liked making things out of clay. And the computer was clay of the mind. Instead of physical, it was mental,” Faulkner, who is 77, told Forbes.
Company milestones noted by Forbes include:
Inking a deal in 2004 with Kaiser Permanente for a three-year, $400-million project.
Moving in 2005 to a corporate campus in southern Wisconsin—an “adult Disney World” with the largest underground auditoriums and more “fantastical” buildings.
More recently, AdventHealth of Altamonte Springs, Fla., contracted with Epic for a $650 million remote build and installation.
“Epic’s system has tentacles that go out through amazing networks. You can actually help a person get the care they need wherever they need to get it,” AdventHealth’s CEO Terry Shaw told Forbes.
“I think that what will happen is that a few of them will do very well. And the majority of them won’t. “It’s not us as much as the health systems who have to respond to the patient saying, ‘Send my data here,’ or ‘Send my data there,’” Faulkner told Forbes.
Bio-Rad’s Alice Schwartz an IVD ‘Pioneer’
As Faulkner rose to prominence in healthcare IT, Alice Schwartz of Bio-Rad Laboratories found massive success in the in vitro diagnostics industry.
She and her late husband, David, started Bio-Rad with $720 in 1952 in Berkeley, Calif. They were intent on offering life science products and services aimed at identifying, separating, purifying, and analyzing chemical and biological materials, notes the company’s website.
“They were at the right place and at the right time as they became pioneers in the industry,” International Business Times (IBT) stated.
Bio-Rad Laboratories (NYSE:BIO and BIOb) of Hercules, Calif., offers life science research and clinical diagnostic products. The company’s second quarter (Q2) 2021 net sales were $715.9 million, an increase of about 33% compared to $536.9 million in Q2 2020, according to a news release. Its Clinical Diagnostics segment Q2 sales were $380 million, an increase of 34% compared to 2020.
Norman Schwartz, the founders’ son, is Bio-Rad’s Chairman of the Board,
President, and CEO. However, at age 94, Alice Schwartz, the oldest person on Forbes’ richest self-made women list, “has no sign of stopping soon,” IBT reported.
Lists are fun. Medical laboratory and diagnostics professionals may admire such foresight and perseverance. Judith Faulkner and Alice Schwartz are extraordinary examples of innovative thinkers in healthcare. There are others—many in clinical laboratories and pathology groups.
23andMe executives say they plan to leverage their database of millions of customer genotypes ‘tohelp accelerate personalized healthcare at scale,’ a key goal of precision medicine
In what some financial analysts believe may be an indication that popularity of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing among customers who seek info on their ethnic background and genetic predisposition to disease is waning, personal genomics/biotechnology company 23andMe announced it has completed its merger with Richard Branson’s VG Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:VGAC) and is now publicly traded on NASDAQ.
According to a 23andMe news release, “The combined company is called 23andMe Holding Co. and will be traded on The Nasdaq Global Select Market (“NASDAQ”) beginning on June 17, 2021, under the new ticker symbol ‘ME’ for its Class A Common shares and ‘MEUSW’ for its public warrants.”
Now that it will file quarterly earnings reports, pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will have the opportunity to learn more about how 23andMe serves the consumer market for genetic types and how it is generating revenue from its huge database containing the genetic sequences from millions of people.
After raising $600 million and being valued at $3.5 billion, CNBC reported that 23andMe’s shares rose by 21% during its first day of trading.
“23andMe is more than just a genetics company. We are an activist brand that is approaching healthcare and drug discovery with the individual at the center, as our partner,” said Anne Wojcicki (above), 23andMe’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, during remarks she gave after ringing the opening bell on the company’s first day of public trading, a 23andMe blog post noted. “We are going to continue pioneering a consumer-centered personalized healthcare world. We are going to show that drug discovery can be more efficient when you start with a human genetic insight,” she continued. (Photo copyright: TechCrunch.)
Might the quick rise in its stock price be a sign that 23andMe—with its database of millions of human genotypes—has found a lucrative path forward in drug discovery?
23andMe says that 80% of its 10.7 million genotyped customers have consented to sharing their data for research, MedCity News reported, adding that, “The long-term focus for 23andMe still remains using all of its accumulated DNA data to strike partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.”
Time for a New Direction at 23andMe
While 23andMe’s merger is a recent development, it is not a surprising direction for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which launched in 2006, to go.
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, both 23andMe and its direct competitor Ancestry had experienced a decline in direct-to-consumer testing sales of at-home DNA and genealogy test kit orders. This decline only accelerated during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, 23andMe Therapeutics, a division focused on research and drug development, has been on the rise, Bloomberg News reported. On its website, 23andMe said it has ongoing studies in oncology, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases.
“It’s kind of an ideal time for us,” Wojcicki told Bloomberg News.
“There are huge growth opportunities ahead,” said Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, which sponsors the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) VG Acquisition Corp., in the 23andMe news release.
In a VG Acquisition Corp. news release, Branson said, “Of the hundreds of companies we reviewed for our SPAC, 23andMe stands head and shoulders above the rest.”
“As an early investor, I have seen 23andMe develop into a company with enormous growth potential. Driven by Anne’s vision to empower consumers, and with our support, I’m excited to see 23andMe make a positive difference to many more people’s lives,” he added.
Report Bullish on Consumer Genetic Testing
Despite the apparent saturation of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing market, and consumers’ concerns about privacy, Infiniti Research reported that worldwide sales of DTC tests “are poised to grow by $1.39 bn during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of over 16% during the forecast period.”
“This study identifies the advances in next-generation genetic sequencing as one of the prime reasons driving the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market growth during the next few years. Also, reduction in the cost of services and growing adoption of online service platforms will lead to sizable demand in the market,” the report states.
Clinical laboratory leaders will want to stay abreast of 23andMe rise as a publicly-traded company. It will be interesting to see if Wojcicki’s vision about moving therapies into clinics in five years comes to fruition.
LabMetrics is a premier lab and health information technology consulting firm leading the life sciences and healthcare industries by delivering technology enabled business and clinical solutions to our clients. Our roots have been deeply founded in these disciplines since 1994 and today embody the collective wisdom and knowledge of our associates.
LabMetrics’ associates provide end-to-end services to the life sciences and healthcare sectors. Our clients include academic medical centers, large health systems, hospitals, hospital-based laboratories, independent laboratories, molecular laboratories, drug-of-abuse testing laboratories, commercial laboratories, startups, capital markets, government agencies, commercial and retail and technology vendors.
LabMetrics’ team of experts is dedicated to achieving your project goals and improving your competitive edge in the market.
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LabMetrics is an experienced, full-service management consulting firm dedicated to servicing the laboratory and health information professions at all levels. LabMetrics’ founder, Jim Sundberg, and its Associates have been active since the early 1980s in various laboratory, health information, technology and financial endeavors working with all levels of executives, physicians, owners and stakeholders to achieve results nationally as well as worldwide.
Our founding principle is to provide our clients with an unparalleled breadth and depth of expertise uniquely focused on not just the typical management consulting, but thoughtfully fused with mission-critical, disruptive technologies where appropriate to achieve your competitive edge. We pride ourselves on being able to structure our engagements to wholly meet the 360 degree needs of our client, rather than the consultant trying to fit the clients’ needs to a limited skill set. As a result, LabMetrics’ can provide to our clients a central, singular, cost effective focus to your project and consulting needs.
Philosophy
LabMetrics Associates have broad, deep experience having built and run successful laboratories, outreach programs, hospital IT departments, technology startups and large financial institutions.
What differentiates us from the competition is our 360 degree real-world approach to each engagement. LabMetrics applies its broad, deep experience and unique, technology-centric methodologies to evaluate your organization’s financial, performance, project and business metrics. Through this process, we gain meaningful, strategic insight into your current state and work with you to develop impactful recommendations.
Leadership and Consultants
Our associates have broad, deep experience having built and run successful laboratories, outreach programs, hospital IT departments, technology startups and large financial institutions.
Jim Sundberg-President & Founder/Core Skills: Leadership, Management, Operations, Outreach, LIS and Technology
Jim is the founder of LabMetrics and has been providing independent consulting and CIO services to the laboratory and healthcare industry for more than 25 years. He has demonstrated success in business and strategic planning, startups, vendor consulting and management, laboratory consolidation, outreach growth and development, system evaluation and selection, leadership coaching and mentoring and complete IT and laboratory service designs for hospitals, health systems, integrated delivery networks, independent laboratories, private equity groups and retail clients. Jim has strong working relationships with the major LIS, AP, billing, financial, middleware and laboratory outreach vendors.
Jim earned a BS degree in computational mathematics with a minor in data processing from Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. He belongs to numerous professional organizations such as Health Information and Management Systems Society, Clinical Lab Managers Association and the Association for Pathology Informatics.
Christina Lucas-CFO and Senior Associate/Core Skills: Leadership, Management, Finance, MA&D, Debt Restructuring and Transactions
Tina’s career has focused entirely on finance, starting with public accounting and progressing through a long banking career to consulting. Tina’s extensive financial consulting has ranged from simple fine-tuning of client performance to complex restructuring, often including refinancing, acquisitions and divestitures.
Tina draws on her diverse critical skills to provide her clients high quality representation–skills which have equipped her to do what she enjoys most-advise clients on their financial needs, develop strategic solutions to assure those needs are met and assist them in implementing their strategic plans.
Richard Ouellette, FACHE CLSSMBB MT(ASCP) – Senior Associate/Core Skills: Lab Management, Lean, Quality Assurance, Business Intelligence, Billing and Automation
Richard specializes in operations improvement, post-merger consolidation and information systems integration for hospital and independent laboratories. He served as the Vice President and CEO of a multi hospital joint venture commercial laboratory and has extensive experience in academic medical centers, community hospitals, commercial laboratories, physician hospital organizations and HMOs. His expertise includes:
•Health System Integration
•Operations Management
•Operations Analysis & Improvement
•Data Modeling and Decision Support System Development
•CMS Laboratory Sanction Response Management
•Information System Integration
•Lean/Six Sigma Process Improvement
John Rhoades MT (ASCP), MBA – Senior Association/Core Skills: Lab Management, LAB Outreach, BB/BD, Lean, Automation, Quality Assurance and Compliance
John has more than 35 years experience in the clinical laboratory field working in a wide range of settings and positions from routine lab testing to sales to management. He has worked as sales and marketing representatives for both regional and national reference laboratories and has extensive outreach development skills. Using a collaborative approach John works with regional health care providers to enhance their local lab systems, drive out national competition and increase the workload and revenue.
Robert Keller MT (ASCP), MBA, Senior Associate/Core Skills: Lab, Auto-verification, LIS, LOINC and Technology
Bob more than 35 years of medical laboratory and information technology experience with specialization in parasitology, MIC testing and anaerobe IC. He is a national LOINC expert, having performed standardization of thousands of different tests including numerous reference lab esoteric tests. Bob’s valuable skills help clients throughout the country by providing laboratory testing assistance, LIS consulting, LIS system evaluation and selection, auto-verification, LOINC and interface/outreach support and services.
Nancy Howard MT 9ASCP) – Senior Associate/Core Skills: Laboratory Management, EMR Interfaces, Outreach, LIS and Technology
Nancy offers more than 35 years of extensive experience in the clinical laboratory field. Her experience includes laboratory management and supervision, staff training and education-both technical and system applications. She equally skilled in outreach information system administration, EMR interface development, quality assessment and improvement, training program development, vendor consulting and subrogation.
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•Full range of business, clinical, financial, management, quality, performance and information technology services
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•LOINC services
•Coding and charge master review
•Instrument correlation studies
•Quality and operation metrics
•Compliance readiness surveys
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•Laboratory and IT management staffing, including interim CIO staffing
Clients
LabMetrics has provided consulting services to numerous clients. A partial sample includes:
•ARUP, Salt Lake City, Utah
•Bon Secours Health System, Marriottsville, Maryland
•Central Florida Health Alliance, Leesburg, Florida
