News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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St. Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital Improves Clinical Laboratory Test Utilization, LOS, and Patient Outcomes by Use of Cloud-based Business Intelligence System

Leadership and the medical laboratory team at this Indianapolis, Indiana-based specialty hospital implemented a clinical intelligence system delivered via the cloud

Does clinical use of a business intelligence (BI) system give hospitals and their clinical laboratories a way to add more value to physicians and contribute to improved outcomes? If you ask the clinical laboratory team and leadership at one specialty hospital in the Midwest, their answer is a resounding “yes!”

St. Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, was an early adopter of business intelligence at the time it acquired a clinical intelligence system in late 2012. Due to the acuity and patient length-of-stay at this hospital, leadership wanted to do something different and innovative that would contribute to measurable and significant improvement in patient outcomes. (more…)

HHS Office of the Inspector General Survey Reveals That Most Hospitals Ignore or Manipulate EHR Fraud Safeguards

Although most clinical laboratories and pathology groups do not use EHR systems, the OIG’s finding should alert them to possible problems with audit integrity of their clients’ EHRs

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems were supposed to prevent fraud, but a recent report from one federal agency states that the fraud safeguards built into EHR systems are not in engaged by a majority of users.

Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers with the responsibility to maintain security of software systems used in their medical laboratories may be interested to read “Not All Recommended Fraud Safeguards Have Been Implemented in Hospital EHR Technology,” a report issued by the Health and Human Services’  (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG). (more…)

Wireless Patient Monitoring and Diagnostic Systems Using MBANs Should Be on the Radar Screens of Pathologists and Clinical Laboratory Professionals

Experts are excited about the swift development of wireless remote monitoring of patients; companies expected to develop sensors that incorporate a wide range of biomarkers

Some experts predict that the era of wireless, remote monitoring of patients is almost upon us. It will require pathologists and medical laboratory professionals to learn a new acronym: MBAN, which stands for medical body area network.

There is keen interest in remote wireless monitoring systems. The concept is to free patients from the hospital bed and allow continuous remote monitoring, regardless of where the patient is located. For this reason, in just a few years and in many local markets, opportunities are likely to be ripe for pathologists and clinical laboratory teams to have a role in managing wireless medical devices that use MBANs. (more…)

Digital PCR Poised to Give Traditional Real-Time PCR a Run for Its Money in Gene Sequencing and Development of New Medical Laboratory Tests

Adoption of digital PCR is slow at this time, but pathologists may want to track how researchers use this technology in the new clinical laboratory assays they use

Molecular pathologists will be interested to learn that there is a new contender in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) arena. It is digital PCR, and it has specific advantages over traditional real-time PCR methods.

For example, digital PCR can target specific DNA sequences in just one molecule of DNA. This new tool allows researchers to isolate rare genetic mutations too difficult to segregate with real-time PCR, noted a report from Insight Pharma Reports. (more…)

Across Canada, Clinical Pathology Laboratories Are Adopting Different Operational Models to Deliver More Value to Clinicians

Because of successive decreases in budgets for clinical laboratory testing, many Canadian medical laboratories are engaging their staffs to innovate and introduce new value-added testing services

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA—Traditional operational and business models for clinical laboratory testing are under siege here in Canada, just as they are in other developed nations across the globe. That was one important trend identified by multiple speakers at Executive Edge 2013, that took place Monday and Tuesday of this week.

During Monday morning’s opening session, a common point of emphasis was that simply consolidating specimens into large medical laboratory facilities as a way to achieve economies of scale and lower the average cost per test is fast becoming obsolete. All pathologists and clinical laboratory managers understand why this is true: payers can lower reimbursement for lab tests faster than labs can cut the costs of performing those tests. (more…)

Hospitals Generally Charge Self-pay Patients Top Price for Care, but Some Providers Now Offer Deep Discounts for Patients Who Pay with Cash

Clinical laboratories and pathology groups may want to review the prices they charge insured patients versus uninsured patients

There is a certain irony in the fact that hospitals and other medical providers typically charge patients without health insurance as much as three times what they charge Medicare or an insured patient. This situation is getting increased media scrutiny, which is one reason why clinical laboratories and pathology groups may want to review their own policies for charging patients without health insurance.

One good study on prices charged to self-pay patients was conducted by Gerard Anderson, Ph.D.,  a health economist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His study was funded by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and published in the May-June 2007 journal Health Affairs.

Anderson analyzed 2004 hospital billing data. He concluded that the gap between rates charged self-pay and insured patients has grown substantially since the mid-1980s. “In the 1950s, the uninsured and poor were charged the lowest prices for medical services. Today they pay the highest prices…,” wrote Anderson, noting that self-pay charges often reflect the hospital’s “chargemaster” prices–the top prices used to negotiate discounts with insurers. (more…)

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