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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COLA Clinical Laboratory Workforce Summit in Fort Worth, Texas, Engages Stakeholders in Effort to Train More Medical Laboratory Scientists

Representatives from almost 50 different clinical laboratories, professional associations, and societies came together this week to align efforts to expand the supply and retention of qualified laboratory scientists

FORT WORTH, TEXAS—Last week, representatives from a broad cross section of clinical laboratories, lab and pathology associations, public health laboratories, and lab regulatory bodies gathered specifically to identify ways to expand the number of skilled lab professionals.

COLA organized the “Workforce Action Alliance Summit,” a one-day gathering of key clinical laboratory stakeholders who share a common interest in developing initiatives that would directly increase the number of individuals choosing to pursue a career in laboratory medicine.

This is not a new problem, as the lack of trained laboratory scientists across all scientific disciplines has been acute for many years.

COLA Graphic
The logo above was developed by COLA to support the Workforce Action Alliance Summit. This year’s first work session took place last week in Fort Worth, Texas. Participants came from such organizations as the CDC Division of Laboratory Systems (DLS), American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS), American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), and American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), along with a number of clinical laboratories. The goal of this initiative is to pull together wide-ranging interests within the profession of laboratory medicine and align specific efforts with projects that directly increase the recruitment, training, and retention of skilled laboratory scientists. (Graphic copyright: COLA.)

Call to Action

In a communication sent to invited participants, COLA’s CEO, Nancy Stratton, and COO, Kathy Nucifora, described the objective of the summit, writing:

“Clearly a call to collective action is required if we are to address the impending clinical laboratory workforce shortage. The past three years have demonstrated the significance of a resilient laboratory infrastructure, not only for the daily care of millions of Americans, but also during the global pandemic. The numerous efforts currently underway to resolve the shortage are unquestionably a component of the solution. Many, however, believe that these efforts are insufficient to close the gap between the projected number of new entrants into the profession, the rate at which those currently in the profession are departing, and the future demand for laboratory testing.”

Robert L. Michel, Editor-in-Chief of Dark Daily’s sister publication The Dark Report was a participant at COLA’S workforce summit. The Dark Report regularly profiles clinical laboratory organizations that have developed innovative and productive initiatives designed to increase the number of students choosing to train as medical technologists (MTs), clinical laboratory scientists (CLSs), medical laboratory technologists (MLTs) and other skilled lab positions.

In materials distributed at the summit, the ongoing gap between demand for skilled lab professionals and the supply was illustrated thusly:

“The US Department of Labor estimates 320,000 bachelors and associates degreed laboratory professionals are working in the United States. If each of those professionals worked a standard 40-year career, the natural annual attrition of 2.5% would require 8,000 new professionals to maintain their current numbers. This exceeds the current output of accredited educational programs by more than 1,000 annually.” 

Case Studies of Success

Over the course of the day, participants at the summit heard about the successes of certain laboratory organizations designed to get more students into training programs, supported by the educational courses required for them to become certified in their chosen area of laboratory medicine. These case studies centered around several themes:

  • Obtaining funding specifically to establish an MT/CLS training program to increase the number of candidates in a region. One example involved ARUP Laboratories and its success at working with a local Congressional representative to get a $3 million federal grant funded as part of a larger legislative package.
  • The medical laboratory scientist (MLS) program at Saint Louis University (SLU) worked with Quest Diagnostics to launch an accelerated bachelor’s degree program. The 16-month program combines online academic courses with intensive hands-on learning and clinical experiences in Quest’s Lenexa, Kansas, laboratory. The first students in this accelerated degree program began their studies in the spring semester of 2023.
  • By rethinking the structure of its existing didactic and experiential learning structure, NorthShore University HealthSystem’s MLS program, located at Evanston Hospital north of Chicago, doubled its enrollment capacity.

During the afternoon, working groups addressed ways that lab organizations can collaborate to increase recruitment and retention of laboratory scientists across all disciplines of lab medicine. This input was synthesized into action planning for the three priorities that can lead to expanding the lab workforce.

By day’s end, several working groups were organized with specific next steps. COLA is taking the lead in managing this initiative and giving it momentum. All clinical laboratory professionals and pathologists are welcome to participate in the Workforce Action Alliance (WAA). Anyone wishing to learn more can contact COLA by clicking here, calling 800-981-9883, or by visiting https://education.cola.org/contact-us-page.

Robert L. Michel

Related Information:

COLA Workforce Action Alliance Summit

Building the Capacity and Resiliency of the Laboratory Workforce

Industry Execs Will Convene to Address the Lab Workforce Shortage

Executives Convene to Address the Laboratory Workforce Shortage

Federal Advisory Committee Seeks Public Comments on Revising CLIA Regulations, says Keynote Speaker at 13th Annual Lab Quality Confab in Atlanta

At The Dark Report’s annual Lab Quality Confab for clinical laboratory administrators, managers, and quality team members, experts outline how disruption in healthcare requires labs to improve processes and cut costs

ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2019—Clinical laboratory professionals have a chance to advise the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how the federal government could revise the regulations under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). That’s according to one of the keynote speakers on Wednesday at The Dark Report’s 13th Annual Lab Quality Confab (LQC), which began here on Tuesday.

Reynolds M. Salerno, PhD, Director of the Division of Laboratory Systems (DLS) for the CDC in Atlanta, explained that the agency is collecting comments from the public and from its Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC) on how to revise the CLIA regulations.

This is an opportunity for clinical laboratory directors, pathologists, and other lab professionals, to comment on the proposed revisions to CLIA before or during the upcoming CLIAC meeting on Nov. 6.

The agenda for the meeting is posted on the CDC’s website.

Public to be Heard on CLIA Regulations

“For the first time in its 26-year history, the council has called for three workgroups to address how to revise CLIA,” Salerno said. The workgroups will address these topics:

“It’s a dramatic step for the government to ask the laboratory community how to revise the CLIA regulations,” Salerno commented. Chartered in 1992, the advisory council meets twice a year, once in April and once in November.

CLIAC issued a summary report of its April 10-11 meeting. It also published an agenda for its upcoming meeting in Nov. 6.

In the coming weeks, Dark Daily will publish more information on how clinical laboratory professionals can comment on the important issue of CLIA revisions.

Digital slides from Salerno’s keynote address are posted on LQC’s presentations website.

Clinical Laboratory Testing is Increasing in Value, Keynote Speaker Says

As a service to clinical laboratories, Salerno outlined many of the services the CDC’s Division of Laboratory Systems provides for free to clinical labs, including information on such topics as:

During his remarks at the 13th Annual Lab Quality Confab in Atlanta, Salerno had good news for the clinical laboratory professionals in attendance. He said that lab testing was becoming a more valued commodity in healthcare because physicians and other providers were growing increasingly confident in lab test results. [Photo copyright: The Dark Report.]

Healthcare System Disruption Impacts Providers, Including Clinical Laboratories

Other keynote speakers addressed how disruption in the US healthcare systems affects provider organizations in significant ways. For clinical laboratories, such disruption has resulted in reduced payment and demands for quality improvement and shorter turnaround times.

For all these reasons, quality management systems may be every clinical laboratory’s best strategy to survive and thrive, the keynote speakers said.

The first keynoter was Robert L. Michel, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Dark Report. Michel’s remarks focused on how price cuts from Medicare, Medicaid, private payers, and the drive for value-based payment, are requiring labs to do more with less. For this reason, quality management systems are necessary for all labs seeking to improve results, eliminate errors, and cut costs, he said.

“The people closest to the work know how to fix these problems,” he added. “That’s why labs know they must train their staff to identify problems and then report them up the chain so they can be fixed,” Michel commented. “Labs that are best at listening to their employees are getting very good at identifying problems by measuring results and monitoring and reporting on their own performance.”

Michel identified three principle factors that are disrupting healthcare:

  • The shift from reactive care in which the health system cares for sick patients to proactive care in which the health system aims to keep patients healthy and out of the hospital and other costly sites of care.
  • The transition away from fee-for-service payment that encourages providers to do more for patients, whether more care is needed or not, to value-based payment that aims to reward providers for keeping patients healthy.
  • The consolidation among hospitals, health systems, physicians, and other providers. A trend that requires clinical laboratories to find new partners and new ways to improve lab services and reduce costs.

Informatics Performance Data Help Clinical Laboratories Respond to Change

“The attributes of new and successful labs are that they will have faster workflow and shorter cycle times for clinical lab tests and anatomic pathology specimen results,” Michel explained. “That means that labs will attack non-value-added processes by implementing continuous improvement strategies [such as Lean and Six Sigma] and by the sophisticated use of informatics.”

Making use of performance data enables clinical laboratory directors to make changes in response to disruptions that affect healthcare. “If you have good informatics, then seven or eight of every 10 decisions you make will be good decisions, and with the other two and three decisions, you’ll have time to pull back and adjust,” Michel commented.

The second keynote speaker, Jeremy Schubert, MBA, MPH, Division Vice President of Abbott, reiterated what Michel said about how the health system is moving away from fee-for-service payment. Instead of focusing on caring for sick patients exclusively, he said, health insurers are paying all healthcare providers to keep patients healthy.

“Healthcare today is about the whole life course of the individual,” Schubert explained. “Patients no longer want healthcare only when they’re sick. Instead, they want to be healthy. And health creation is not just about a person’s physical health. It’s about their mental health, their emotional health, and their social wellbeing.

“In fact,” he continued, “you can learn more about a person’s health from their Zip code than from their genetic code.”

That is essentially what TriCore Reference Laboratories (TriCore) has been doing in New Mexico, Schubert added. During his presentation, Michel mentioned TriCore as being one of four clinical laboratories participating in Project Santa Fe, a non-profit organization that promotes the movement from Clinical Lab 1.0 to Clinical Lab 2.0. (See “TriCore Forges Ahead to Help Payers Manage Population Health,” The Dark Report, May 20, 2019.)

“If you want to be a quality engine in healthcare you have to be operating at Lab 2.0. Who is best qualified to interpret information? It’s the lab,” Schubert said. Then he challenged labs to begin pursuing the goal of achieving Lab 3.0, saying “Lab 3.0 is being able to interface with the patient to address each patient’s problems.”

The 13th Annual Lab Quality Confab (LQC) in Atlanta continues through the 17th with post-event workshops in Six Sigma and mastering quality management systems. In attendance are 300 clinical laboratory administrators, managers, and quality team members who are learning a complete array of professional training methods.

To register to attend, click here or enter https://www.labqualityconfab.com/register into your browser, or call 707-829-9485, or e-mail lqcreg@amcnetwork.com.

—Joseph Burns

Related Information:

Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee Agenda for meeting Nov. 6

Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee Summary Report

TriCore Forges Ahead to Help Payers Manage Population Health

Helping Medical Laboratories Add Value to Health Systems, Providers, and Payers by Moving from Clinical Lab 1.0 to Clinical Lab 2.0

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