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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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Who Has Responsibility for Clinical Laboratory Regulations? Bench Staff and Managers Diverge

However, effective communication can bring more harmony to medical lab managers and scientists when it comes to compliance

Depending on how lab professionals view it, clinical laboratory regulations can be characterized as a series of checklists to fill out or an opportunity to grow an organization.

That theme played heavily into this week’s Lab Manager Leadership Summit during a session titled, “Leading Clinical Labs during Challenging Regulatory Times.” The Leadership Summit, which concludes on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, is hosted by Dark Daily’s publisher, LabX Media Group.

“Is your focus on checking boxes or building a stronger lab?” asked speaker Kelly VanBemmel, MS, MB(ASCP)CM, laboratory operations supervisor at Devyser Genomic Laboratories in Roswell, Ga.

Leaning into the latter option will preserve regulatory compliance while also ensuring the operational health of the clinical laboratory.

At the Lab Manager Leadership Summit, Kelly VanBemmel, MS, MB(ASCP)CM (above) pressed attendees to open the lines of communication between bench scientists and lab managers when it comes to clinical laboratory regulations. (Photo copyright: Scott Wallask.)

‘There’s a Gap’ in How Both Sides View Regulatory Compliance

VanBemmel spent her presentation aiming to bridge the rift between how bench scientists look at clinical laboratory regulations compared to the views of medical lab managers.

“There’s a gap between how staff experience regulations and how management does,” she noted. “Staff typically think of compliance as a checklist to do their jobs.” Managers, however, need to understand a wider compliance picture. She illustrated her point by comparing views on the following regulatory bodies.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA):

  • Staff typically recognize that the CLIA regulations are the minimum standards a lab needs to operate in a patient testing environment.
  • Managers recognize that CMS develops, publishes, and implements CLIA rules and guidance.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which provides labs with technical standards and safety guidelines that tie to CLIA:

Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which categorizes medical laboratory devices and in vitro diagnostics:

  • Staff understand that the FDA clears tests and devices for use in non-research environments, though not all consumables or equipment are in that setting.
  • Managers understand that the FDA develops rules and guidance for CLIA complexity categorization.

College of American Pathologists (CAP), COLA, and The Joint Commission, which accredit clinical laboratories on behalf of CMS:

  • Staff typically recognize the name of their lab’s accrediting body and that the group sends inspectors.
  • Managers recognize that CLIA dictates that an accrediting body inspects labs based on exceeding minimum standards to conduct patient testing.

(Readers of The Dark Report can check out past coverage about frequent deficiencies cited by accrediting bodies.)

Communication Leads to Common Ground with Clinical Laboratory Regulations

Given the above differences among managers and staff, VanBemmel explained that both sides must frequently talk to each other to fill in the missing details.

“When you’re in the thick of regulations, communication becomes critical,” she said.

For example, bench staff may feel it is solely their manager’s responsibility to comply with clinical laboratory regulations. Savvy lab leaders will point out non-compliant conditions—such as diagnostic analyzer malfunctions and sample cross contamination—over which bench staff have direct control, helping workers better understand their responsibility when it comes to compliance.

On the other hand, lazy communication from managers to their bench scientists can stunt compliance efforts. She recalled a prior supervisor who often answered questions about regulations by asking: What does the standard operation procedure state?

“That answer wasn’t particularly helpful,” VanBemmel recalled. “That made me think that my supervisor didn’t understand nuance.”

Thorough communication builds greater trust, and seasoned clinical laboratory professionals of all ranks will quickly recognize the compliance benefits when the worker-manager relationship gels.

—Scott Wallask

National Institutes of Health Study Finds No Reliable Biomarkers Exist for Long COVID

Study is another example of how important clinical laboratory testing is when government officials attack a new public health issue

Long COVID—aka SARS-CoV-2 infection’s post-acute sequelae (PASC)—continues to confound researchers seeking one or more clinical laboratory biomarkers for diagnosing the condition. A new study led by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) RECOVER Initiative and supported by NYU Langone Health recently revealed that “routine clinical laboratory tests were unable to provide a reliable biomarker of … long COVID,” Inside Precision Medicine reported.

The NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative used a cohort study of more than 10,000 individuals with and without previous COVID-19 diagnoses and compared samples using 25 common laboratory tests in hopes a useful biomarker could be identified. They were unsuccessful.

Leora Horwitz, MD, director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science and co-principal investigator for the RECOVER CSC (Clinical Science Core) at NYU Langone; Andrea S. Foulkes, ScD, director of biostatistics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; and Grace A. McComsey, MD, VP of research and associate chief scientific officer at University Hospitals Health System, and professor of pediatrics and medicine at Case Western Reserve University, led the study.

Long COVID—or PASC—is an umbrella term for those with persistent post-COVID infection symptoms that negatively impact quality of life. Though it affects millions worldwide and has been called a major public health burden, the NIH/Langone study scientists noted one glaring problem: PASC is defined differently in the major tests they studied. This makes consistent diagnoses difficult.

The study brought to light possible roadblocks that prevented biomarker identification.

“Although potential models of pathogenesis have been postulated, including immune dysregulation, viral persistence, organ injury, endothelial dysfunction, and gut dysbiosis, there are currently no validated clinical biomarkers of PASC,” the study authors wrote in their study, “Differentiation of Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Postacute Sequelae by Standard Clinical Laboratory Measurements in the RECOVER Cohort,” published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

“This study is an important step toward defining long COVID beyond any one individual symptom,” said study author Leora Horwitz, MD (above), director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science and co-principal investigator for the RECOVER CSC at NYU Langone, in a Langone Health news release. “This definition—which may evolve over time—will serve as a critical foundation for scientific discovery and treatment design.” In the future, clinical laboratories may be tasked with finding combinations of routine and reference tests that, together, enable a more precise and earlier diagnosis of long COVID.  (Photo copyright: Yale School of Medicine.)

NIH/Langone Study Details

“The study … examined 25 routinely used and standardized laboratory tests chosen based on availability across institutions, prior literature, and clinical experience. These tests were conducted prospectively in laboratories that are certified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). The samples were collected from 10,094 RECOVER-Adult participants, representing a diverse cohort from all over the US,” Inside Precision Medicine reported.

However, the scientists found no clinical laboratory “value” among the 25 tests examined that “reliably indicate previous infection, PASC, or the particular cluster type of PASC,” Inside Precision Medicine noted, adding that “Although some minor differences in the results of specific laboratory tests attempted to differentiate between individuals with and without a history of infection, these findings were generally clinically meaningless.”

“In a cohort study of more than 10,000 participants with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, we found no evidence that any of 25 routine clinical laboratory values provide a reliable biomarker of prior infection, PASC, or the specific type of PASC cluster. … Overall, no evidence was found that any of the 25 routine clinical laboratory values assessed in this study could serve as a clinically useful biomarker of PASC,” the study authors wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.

In addition to a vague definition of PASC, the NIH/Langone researchers noted a few other potential problems identifying a biomarker from the research.

“Use of only selected biomarkers, choice of comparison groups, if any (people who have recovered from PASC or healthy control participants); duration of symptoms; types of symptoms or phenotypes; and patient population features, such as sex, age, race, vaccination status, comorbidities, and severity of initial infection,” could be a cause for ambiguous results, the scientists wrote.

Future Research

“Understanding the basic biological underpinnings of persistent symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection will likely require a rigorous focus on investigations beyond routine clinical laboratory studies (for example, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics) to identify novel biomarkers,” the study authors wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.

“Our challenge is to discover biomarkers that can help us quickly and accurately diagnose long COVID to ensure people struggling with this disease receive the most appropriate care as soon as possible,” said David Goff, MD, PhD, director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in an NHLBI news release. “Long COVID symptoms can prevent someone from returning to work or school, and may even make everyday tasks a burden, so the ability for rapid diagnosis is key.”

“Approximately one in 20 US adults reported persisting symptoms after COVID-19 in June 2024, with 1.4% reporting significant limitations,” the NIH/Langone scientists wrote in their published study.

Astute clinical laboratory scientists will recognize this as possible future diagnostic testing. There is no shortage of need.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

“Long COVID” Evades Common SARS-CoV-2 Clinical Lab Tests

Differentiation of Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Postacute Sequelae by Standard Clinical Laboratory Measurements in the RECOVER Cohort

Long COVID Diagnostics: An Unconquered Challenge

RECOVER Study Offers Expanded Working Definition of Long COVID

Routine Lab Tests Are Not a Reliable Way to Diagnose Long COVID

Big Industry Changes in Focus at the Annual Executive War College

FDA announces final rule on Lab-Developed Tests LDTs) as Clinical Lab Leaders Meet in New Orleans

Regulatory changes were the talk of the 29th Annual Executive War College, with attendees buzzing about Monday’s  US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announcement that it had finalized the rule on laboratory developed tests (LDTs). The timing was perfect at the first full day of the New Orleans event, which is focused on diagnostics, clinical laboratory, and pathology management, and featured a bevy of experts to walk the audience through the current state of the regulatory landscape.

“The timing of EWC with the release of this policy couldn’t be better,” CEO and founder of Momentum Consulting Valerie Palmieri told Dark Daily in an interview at Monday night’s opening reception. “It’s a great conference to not only catch up with colleagues but really hear and have those difficult discussions about where we are today, where we’re going, and where we need to be.”

Final LDT rule ‘radically’ different than draft

Tim Stenzel, MD, PhD, former director of the FDA’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics called the finalized rule “radically different” from the proposed rule. In some ways it is less complex: “The bar is lower,” he said, noting that he was voicing his personal views and not those of the federal agency. “I was convinced that there would be lawsuits, but I’m now not sure if that’s advisable.”

Still, laboratory teams will have to parse the more than 500-page document to determine how the final rule relates to their specific circumstances. After that, it won’t be as challenging, Stenzel said.

His advice: First, read the rule. Second, reach out to FDA for help—he’s sure, he said, that the office is geared up to respond to a “ton of questions” about the implications for individual labs and are standing by to answer emails from labs. And, he added in a discussion session, emailing the agency is free.

The final rule will be in force 60 days after it’s published. Stenzel provided a timeline for some of the milestones:

1 Year: Comply with MD(AE) reporting and reporting of corrections and removals.

2 Years: Comply with labeling, registration and listing, and investigational use requirements.

3 Years: QS records and, in some cases, design controls and purchasing controls.

3.5 Years: Comply with high risk (class III) premarket review requirements.

4 Years: Comply with moderate and low-risk premarket review requirements.

 Lâle White, Executive Chair and CEO of XiFin, Inc.

Big changes bring big opportunities

Executive Chair and CEO of XiFin, Inc. Lâle White welcomed the audience with a morning keynote entitled “Big Changes in Healthcare” on new regulations and diagnostics players poised to reshape lab testing.

The diagnostics business is in constant flux, she noted, from payer requirements to greater regulatory and compliance burdens on labs. Other factors include the growing senior population and increasingly complex health conditions, rising costs throughout the healthcare ecosystem, falling funding and reimbursement, and staffing shortages.

As for the economic challenges, consumers are increasingly making decisions based on cost, convenience and quality. The population is shifting to Medicare advantage, which is more cost effective. But changes to the star ratings system will mean lower pay for payer organizations. Those companies will, in turn, mitigate their losses by making changes to pre-authorizations and tightening denials, even for clean claims.

Still, White said, more money isn’t the answer.

White urged the audience to use technology, including artificial intelligence and advances in genetic testing, to manage these and other industry changes.

“We need to optimize the tests we order,” she said. “And if we did that, lab diagnostics really has the potential to change the economics of health and improve outcomes.”

The FDA, Stenzel added, is “very interested” in stimulating innovation, building on the laboratory industry’s success in responding swiftly to the COVID pandemic and outbreaks of Monkey Pox, for example.

CDC: Laboratories on the front line of readiness

The pre-lunch events also included an update on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) regulations for clinical laboratories, featuring Reynolds Salerno, director of the division of laboratory systems at the CDC.

He shared lessons learned from recent public health emergencies, talked about CDC’s efforts to engage with clinical labs to improve future public health readiness and response and provided an overview of the CDC’s first laboratory-specific center.

“Laboratories are fundamental to public health,” he said. The industry is on the “front lines” when it comes to identifying threats, responding to them, and preparing for future responses.

Robert Michel, Editor-in-Chief of The Dark Report wrapped up the day’s regulatory discussions with a general session on the “regulatory trifecta” that includes the LDT final rule, CLIA regulations, and private payers’ policies for genetic claims.

–Gienna Shaw

Congress Holds Off on Enabling FDA Regulation of Clinical Laboratory-Developed Tests

Supporters of the VALID Act say lobbying blitz by academic medical centers prevented its passage

In 2022, a bill before Congress titled the Verifying Accurate Leading-Edge IVCT Development Act (VALID Act) sought to change the current regulatory scheme for clinical laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) and in vitro clinical tests (IVCTs).

But even though the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and nine other organizations signed a December 12 stakeholder letter to leaders of key House and Senate committees urging passage of legislation that would enable some regulation of LDTs, the VALID Act was ultimately omitted from the year-end omnibus spending bill (H.R. 2617).

That may be due to pressure from organizations representing clinical laboratories and pathologists which lobbied hard against the bill.

The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), Association for Pathology Informatics, and Association of Pathology Chairs were among many signatories on a May 22 letter to leaders of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that described the bill as “very flawed, problematic legislation.”

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) also signed the letter, as did numerous medical laboratories and health systems, as well as the American Society of Hematology and the Clinical Immunology Society.

Emily Volk, MD

Responding to criticism of its stance on FDA oversight of LDTs, in a May 2022 open letter posted on the organization’s website, anatomic pathologist and CAP president Emily Volk, MD, said “we at the CAP have an honest difference of opinion with some other respected laboratory organizations. … We believe the VALID Act is the only viable piece of legislation addressing the LDT issue. … the VALID Act contains many provisions that are similar to policy the CAP has advocated for regarding the regulation of laboratory tests since 2009. Importantly, the current version includes explicit protections for pathologists and our ability to practice medicine without infringement from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).” (Photo copyright: College of American Pathologists.)

Organizations on Both Sides Brought Pressure to Bear on Legislators

“University laboratories and their representatives in Washington put on a full-court press against this,” Rep. Larry Bucshon, MD, (R-Indiana) told ProPublica. Bucshon, who is also a cardiothoracic surgeon, co-sponsored the VALID Act along with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado).

The AAMC and AMP were especially influential, Bucshon told ProPublica. In addition to spending hefty sums on lobbying, AMP urged its members to contact legislators directly and provided talking points, ProPublica reported.

“The academic medical centers and big medical centers are in every state,” Bucshon said. As major employers in many locales, they have “a pretty big voice,” he added.

CAP, on the other hand, was joined in its efforts by AdvaMed, a trade association for medical technology companies, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Association of Black Cardiologists, Friends of Cancer Research, Heart Valve Voice US, LUNGevity Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Discussing CAP’s reasoning behind its support of the VALID Act in a May 26 open letter and podcast, CAP president Emily Volk, MD, said the Valid Act “creates a risk-based system of oversight utilizing three tiers—low, moderate and high risk—in order to target the attention of the FDA oversight.”

While acknowledging that it had room for improvement, she lauded the bill’s three-tier risk-based system, in which tests deemed to have the greatest risks would receive the highest level of scrutiny.

She also noted that the bill exempts existing LDTs from an FDA premarket review “unless there is a safety concern for patients.” It would also exempt “low-volume tests, modified tests, manual interpretation tests, and humanitarian tests,” she wrote.

In addition, the bill would “direct the FDA not to create regulations that are duplicative of regulation under CLIA,” she noted, and “would require the FDA to conduct public hearings on LDT oversight.”

Pros and Cons of the VALID Act

One concern raised by opponents relates to how the VALID Act addressed user fees paid by clinical laboratories to fund FDA compliance activities. But Volk wrote that any specific fees “would need to be approved by Congress in a future FDA user fee authorization bill after years of public input.”

During the May 2022 podcast, Volk also cast CAP’s support as a matter of recognizing political realities.

“We understand that support for FDA oversight of laboratory-developed tests or IVCTs is present on both sides of the aisle and in both houses of Congress,” she said. “In fact, it enjoys wide support among very influential patient advocacy groups.” These groups “are very sophisticated in their understanding of the issues with laboratory-developed tests, and they do have the ear of Congress. There are many in the laboratory community that believe the VALID Act goes too far, but I can tell you that many of these patient groups don’t believe it goes far enough and are actively pushing for even more restrictive paradigms.”

Also urging passage of the bill were former FDA commissioners Scott Gottlieb, MD, and Mark B. McClellan, MD, PhD. In a Dec. 5 opinion piece for STAT, they noted that “diagnostic technologies have undergone considerable advances in recent decades, owing to innovation in fields like genomics, proteomics, and data science.” However, they wrote, laws governing FDA oversight “have not kept pace,” placing the agency in a position of regulating tests based on where they are made—in a medical laboratory or by a manufacturer—instead of their “distinctive complexity or potential risks.”

In their May 22 letter, opponents of the legislation outlined broad areas of concern. They contended that it would create “an onerous and complex system that would radically alter the way that laboratory testing is regulated to the detriment of patient care.” And even though existing tests would be largely exempted from oversight, “the utility of these tests would diminish over time as the VALID Act puts overly restrictive constraints on how they can be modified.”

CLIA Regulation of LDTs also Under Scrutiny

The provision to avoid duplication with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) program—which currently has some regulatory oversight of LDTs and IVCTs—is “insufficient,” opponents added, “especially when other aspects of the legislation call for requirements and activities that lead to duplicative and unnecessary regulatory burden.”

Opponents to the VALID Act also argued that the definitions of high-, medium-, and low-risk test categories lacked clarity, stating that “the newly created definition of moderate risk appears to overlap with the definition of high risk.”

The opponents also took issue with the degree of discretion that the bill grants to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. This will create “an unpredictable regulatory process and ambiguities in the significance of the policy,” they wrote, while urging the Senate committee to “narrow the discretion so that stakeholders may better evaluate and understand the implications of this legislation.”

Decades ago, clinical laboratory researchers were allowed to develop assays in tandem with clinicians that were intended to provide accurate diagnoses, earlier detection of disease, and help guide selection of therapies. Since the 1990s, however, an industry of investor-funded laboratory companies have brought proprietary LDTs to the national market. Many recognize that this falls outside the government’s original intent for encouragement of laboratory-developed tests to begin with.

—Stephen Beale

Related Information:

The Tests Are Vital. But Congress Decided That Regulation Is Not.

Message from the CAP President on the VALID Act

Better Lab Test Standards Can Ensure Precision Medicine Is Truly Precise

Healthcare Groups Urge Congress to Pass Diagnostic Testing Reform Before Year’s End

Califf: FDA May Use Rulemaking for Diagnostics Reform If VALID Isn’t Passed

Is FDA LDT Surveillance Set to Improve as VALID Act Heads to Resolution?

Congress Needs to Update FDA’s Ability to Regulate Diagnostic Tests, Cosmetics

FDA User Fee Reauthorization: Contextualizing the VALID Act

They Trusted Their Prenatal Test. They Didn’t Know the Industry Is an Unregulated “Wild West.”

InsideHealthPolicy: Pew, AdvaMed, Others Push for VALID as Clock Ticks on Government Funding

AdvaMed Leads Letter Urging Lawmakers to Support Bipartisan Diagnostics Reform

Survey: Proposed FDA Approval of Laboratory Developed Tests Will Reduce Innovation

Though response was limited in Dark Daily’s poll, the message from respondents was overwhelmingly negative on LDT regulation by the FDA

Most respondents to a recent industry survey said that should Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval be required in the future for laboratory developed tests (LDTs), innovation will suffer.

This conclusion echoes what opponents of the Verifying Accurate Leading-Edge IVCT Development Act (VALID Act) have argued will happen should that proposed bill become law.

In the survey, which was conducted by Dark Daily, 91% of respondents said FDA pre-market approval of LDTs would decrease clinical laboratories’ ability to bring innovative tests to market. (See Figure 1.) The other 9% felt it would have no effect on innovation. Zero of the respondents said FDA involvement would increase innovative tests.

Figure 1: “How might a requirement of FDA pre-market approval impact the ability of your lab (or a lab you work for) to bring innovative tests to market?

“Development of LDT tests has been the mission of most of the labs, and it meets the need for patient care,” noted one respondent in the survey. “Moving LDTs under FDA will create more obstacles for labs to offer the tests.”

To be fair, the survey had limited responses—34 in total. The poll went out to thousands of Dark Daily readers. We found that response rate surprising given how many labs will be affected if the VALID Act becomes law.

An LDT is a proprietary diagnostic test developed and performed by an individual clinical laboratory. In academic medical center laboratories, LDTs often address unmet clinical needs. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA) generally regulates LDTs.

VALID Act vs. VITAL Act Hinges on LDT Oversight

The VALID Act is a bipartisan bill that proposes FDA oversight of laboratory developed tests. The bill continues to make its way through the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

A counterproposal called the Verified Innovative Testing in American Laboratories Act (VITAL Act) is also before Congress but has less momentum behind it. The VITAL Act seeks to keep LDTs under CLIA while also calling for reforms to account for modern lab tests.

See our past reporting in Dark Daily for a detailed comparison of the VALID Act and VITAL Act.

Looking at survey results, 80% “strongly disagreed” or “disagreed” that new LDT requirements, such as those found in the VALID Act, are needed. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2: “FDA pre-market approval of LDTs should be required, as proposed in the VALID Act.”

By comparison, 65% “strongly agreed” or “agreed” with modernizing CLIA requirements for LDTs, as called for in the VITAL Act.

Those numbers shifted somewhat depending on the lab setting of the respondent. For example, just looking at commercial labs, opposition to the VALID Act remained similar, but support for modernizing CLIA jumped up to 88%. When looking at just hospitals, independent labs, and academic labs, numbers for both topics remained consistent.

When filtering the answers, the number of lab employees in a setting had little effect on survey results.

Political Battle Continues Over Laboratory Developed Tests

Clinical laboratory industry groups and others have been amassing to oppose or support the VALID Act. For example, the Advanced Medical Technology Association and The Pew Charitable Trusts are behind the bill.

However, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Association for Molecular Pathology, and new Coalition for Innovative Laboratory Testing are against the VALID Act.

Congress may attach the VALID Act to the authorization vote for the Medical Device User Fee Agreement V (MDUFA). At this point, discussions on MDUFA remain in congressional committees.

—Scott Wallask

Related Information:

VALID Act language

VITAL Act language

What is a laboratory developed test?

LDT Regulation: New Survey Asks Readers for Their Views About Two Bills Before Congress

MDUFA V Agreement Enables Bold MedTech Vision to Become Reality

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