Collaboration between Pathologists, Medical Laboratories, and Hospital Staff Substantially Reduced Hospital-Acquired Infections, AHRQ Reports

Jul 26, 2017 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology

Decline in hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) overall since 2010 attributed to increased attention to safety protocols and practices by hospital staff in cooperation with clinical laboratory services It’s now been almost nine years since the Medicare Program stopped paying hospitals and other providers for certain hospital-acquired conditions (HACs). Included in this list are hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). The goal is to substantially reduce the number of HACs and HAIs, thus improving...

Even as Patient Satisfaction Surveys Grow in Importance, Hospitals, Physicians, and Clinical Laboratories Struggle to Use That Data to Improve the Patient Experience

Feb 24, 2017 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing

Experts point to the challenges: not only is there a lack of consensus in how to best measure patient satisfaction, but there are also different opinions as to what are the right steps providers should take to improve the patient experience In today’s healthcare industry, “Patient Satisfaction” is high on the list of phrases likely to be heard in any medical facility, including in pathology groups and clinical laboratories. With recent and ongoing changes to the way that providers are paid,...

Research Study at Johns Hopkins University Reveals CDC Does Not Record Medical Errors in Annual Mortality Report, Yet Such Errors Are Third Leading Cause of Death

Jun 29, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology

An earlier Johns Hopkins study looked at diagnostic errors and determined that such errors were the leading cause of malpractice payouts. Can clinical laboratories help? At a time of heightened transparency in healthcare outcomes, a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Johns Hopkins) study makes a startling conclusion: medical errors are an under-recognized cause of patients’ deaths in the United States. In fact, medical errors rank third—after heart disease and cancer—in causing...

Recent Study Estimates that 5% of Patients in Outpatient Settings Are Misdiagnosed, Offering Pathologists an Opportunity to Provide More Consultations to Doctors

Aug 11, 2014 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations

This spring, researchers at the VA Hospital in Houston published a study revealing that one in 20 patients in outpatient settings are misdiagnosed Publication of new peer-reviewed clinical studies indicates that, within the United States, more than 5% of outpatients—or 12 million people—are misdiagnosed annually. Few pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists would dispute this number because every day they see the best and the worst of how physicians use medical laboratory tests. These...

Could Patient-Error Reports Cause Pathologists To Be Responsible for Other Providers’ Mistakes?

Dec 31, 2012 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology

Who is responsible when a patient is misdiagnosed because the patient’s physician read a clinical laboratory test report incorrectly? Could clinical pathologists be held responsible for medical errors caused by other providers? That’s a possibility under a proposal from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). AHRQ is seeking approval for a prototype of a new reporting system for medical errors, AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., told The New York Times in a story...