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 published on September 22, 2012. “Currently there is no mechanism for consumers to report information about patient safety events,” she said.
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Apr 5, 2011 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
CMS officials have instructed carriers not to enforce the physician signature rule for paper requisitions for medical laboratory tests
Officials at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will continue to delay enforcement of a rule requiring physician signatures on paper requisitions for medical laboratory tests. This is a positive development for all clinical laboratories and pathology groups in the United States.
What is an even more important development is that this rule may never be enforced, according to leaders from two of the nation’s laboratory associations. The entire medical laboratory testing industry has waited since the end of December for an official statement from CMS on enforcement of this rule.
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