Jan 19, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Experts predict a surge in the number of physicians using electronic medical record systems
By dangling as much as $20 billion in front of physicians to encourage their adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems during the next few years, Congress has created a new and expensive challenge for the nation’s clinical laboratories. That challenge is the need for every pathology laboratory to establish a high-function interface from its LIS to the office-based physician’s EMR.
According to one expert, the government’s “carrot and stick” strategy to reward doctors financially for adopting EMR’s, will soon force independent medical laboratories and hospital laboratory outreach programs to play catch up with LIS-EMR interfaces to maintain access to physician referrals and the revenue that accompanies these laboratory test specimens.
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Oct 12, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
More medical tourists may also contribute to further globalization of lab testing
Medical tourism continues to be a force with the potential to exert significant influence on healthcare in the United States. For that reason, experts have weighed in recently on how efforts to reform healthcare may either inhibit or encourage growth in the number of Americans opting to become medical tourists.
Just as medical tourism has the potential to be transformative to certain aspects of healthcare here in this country, Dark Daily believes that medical tourism may also encourage greater globalization of pathology services and clinical laboratory testing. For both reasons, pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will find recent commentary to be enlightening. (more…)
Aug 19, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
One approach is to bundle payments to hospitals, physicians, labs, and other providers
Momentum is building around a new effort to drive down existing rates of hospital readmissions. Different reimbursement proposals to encourage hospitals and physicians to reduce current readmission rates will likely also change the reimbursement status quo for laboratory testing. For example, bundling Part A and Part B payments may be one approach.
Experts increasingly believe one game changer in lowering healthcare costs and improving outcomes is avoidable hospital readmissions. One in five Medicare patients returns to the hospital within 30 days. Overall, readmissions cost Medicare an estimated $17 billion yearly. Of this total, about $12 billion are believed to be avoidable cases
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Aug 12, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Effort will identify which clinical procedures actually benefit patients—and are cost-effective
“Comparative effectiveness research (CER)” is likely to be one method that healthcare reformers use to establish reimbursement for different medical technologies and treatments. This will apply equally to clinical laboratory testing and pathology professional services as well as other medical procedures.
There is a compelling reason why comparative effectiveness is likely to happen on this turn of the healthcare reform wheel. Congress put teeth into the comparative effectiveness movement earlier this year when it provided $1.1 billion to support the effort in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
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Jul 27, 2009 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
It’s a political slugfest which only reinforces the complexity of healthcare in this country
Get ready for the “Healthcare Reform Chart Wars,” brought to you courtesy of the two political parties. In the fight over the Obama Administration’s plan to reform healthcare, each side seems to be striving to offer up the most complex chart of how healthcare operates pre- and post-reform.
One chart (Republicans) skewers the complexity of the Democratic Party’s proposed reforms. The other chart (Democrats) demonstrates the convoluted intricacies of the existing American healthcare system. It appears that both Democrats and Republicans are engaged in this tussle with equal vigor and Dark Daily readers will enjoy the play-by-play of this unfolding farce.
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