CMS Issues PAMA Final Rule That Aims to Cut Medicare’s Clinical Laboratory Test Price Schedule Sharply Beginning in 2018

Analysis shows new rule requires data gathering effort that favors larger medical laboratories and thus threatens community labs that serve smaller towns and rural areas When The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued their Final Rule for lab test market price reporting under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA) last month, it put the clinical laboratory industry on a path that will have significant financial consequences for all labs, whether large or small....

Bio-Reference Laboratories Acquires Hunter Laboratories as a Way to Enter California’s Competitive Clinical Laboratory Marketplace

Acquisition gives BRLI a core laboratory facility in Northern California, along with Hunter Laboratories’ Medi-Cal license, 29 patient service centers, and its courier network Yesterday’s announcement that BioReference Laboratories, Inc. (Nasdaq:BRLI), of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, had acquired a majority interest in Hunter Laboratories—a clinical laboratory company in Campbell, California—caught many medical laboratory executives by surprise. It is a strategic move that gives Bio-Reference...

Supreme Court Strikes down Myriad Gene Patents in Unanimous Vote; Decision Is Expected to Benefit Clinical Pathology Laboratories

Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers can expect to see an expansion of genetic testing in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Myriad case Pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals got a major victory on June 13. That’s when the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled 9-0 to end the 30-year-old practice of awarding patents on human genes. The unanimous decision invalidates certain hotly contested patents held by Myriad Genetics, Inc., (NASDAQ: MYGN) on the BRCA1...

Some Clinical Laboratories Report Drop in Average Number of Tests-Per-Patient

Medical laboratories and pathology groups can participate in national survey about changes in average revenue-per-requisition and average number of tests-per-requisition Across the country, a number of clinical laboratory organizations have privately told The Dark Report editorial team that they have experienced a decline in the average number of lab tests-per-requisition over the past 18 months. Since the sample size is so small, it would be inappropriate to conclude that the experience of...

Survey Set to Measure Impact of Trend by Urologists and GIs to Create Their Own In-Office Anatomic Pathology Laboratories

Medical laboratories and pathology groups lose access to tissue specimens when office-based physicians operate their own in-clinic pathology laboratory One trend reshaping the profession of anatomic pathology with surprising speed is the growth of in-clinic pathology laboratories by specialist physicians. As each office-based physician group builds its own in-clinic pathology laboratory, local pathology groups and medical laboratories lose access to the tissue specimens these doctors now...
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