Though the cost of clinical laboratory testing is not highlighted in KFF’s annual survey, it is a component in how much employers pay for healthcare plans for their employees
Employers now pay higher health insurance premiums than ever for family coverage. However, because of the current tight labor market, they are generally absorbing much of that increase rather than passing the higher costs on to their workers. That’s one key takeaway from KFF’s 26th annual Employer Health Benefits Survey, which the non-profit published on Oct. 9, 2024. While the report does not comment specifically about the cost of clinical laboratory testing or genetic testing and how they may contribute to rising insurance costs, it stands to reason they are part of growing healthcare costs for corporate health benefits.
The KFF survey found that premiums for family coverage increased 7% in 2024, reaching an average of $25,572. That follows a 7% increase in 2023. “Over the past five years—a period of high inflation (23%) and wage growth (28%)—the cumulative increase in premiums has been similar (24%),” KFF stated in a press release.
However, the amount paid by workers has gone up by less than $300 since 2019. It now stands at an average of $6,296, a total increase of 5% over five years. On average, workers covered 25% of family premium costs in 2024, down from 29% in 2023. Workers with single coverage paid an average of $1,368—16% of the annual premium cost—compared with 17% in 2023.
“Employers are shelling out the equivalent of buying an economy car for every worker every year to pay for family coverage,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman, PhD (above), said in a press release. “In the tight labor market in recent years, they have not been able to continue offloading costs onto workers who are already struggling with healthcare bills.” Rising costs of clinical laboratory testing is always part of the mix contributing to increased worker insurance premiums for employers. (Photo copyright: KFF.)
HDHP/SO plans, as defined by KFF, “have a deductible of at least $1,000 for single coverage and $2,000 for family coverage and are offered with an HRA [Health Reimbursement Arrangement] or are HSA [health savings account]-qualified.” Point-of-service plans “have lower cost sharing for in-network provider services and do not require a primary care gatekeeper to screen for specialist and hospital visits,” the report states.
Cost Sharing via Deductibles
Average deductible amounts—which KFF identified as another form of cost-sharing—varied depending on the type of plan, employer size, and whether the worker had family or single coverage.
For workers with single coverage, average deductibles across all plan types rose from $1,655 in 2019 to $1,787 in 2024, a total five-year increase of about 8%. The average in 2023 was $1,735. These numbers were for in-network providers.
The report noted that some family plans calculate deductibles using an aggregate structure, “in which all family members’ out-of-pocket expenses count toward the deductible,” whereas others use a separate per-person structure. The report includes breakdowns of average deductibles across all types.
Who Offers the Best Benefits?
In general, the KFF report found that large companies—defined as those with 200 or more workers—tend to offer more generous health benefits than smaller ones. Virtually all large companies (98%) offered health benefits, while slightly more than half of small companies (53%) do so.
Among companies that do offer health benefits, the average deductible at a small firm was $2,575 compared to $1,538 at large firms. Among workers with family coverage, the average contribution toward overall premium costs was $7,947 (33%) at small firms compared to $5,697 (23%) at large firms. Among workers with single coverage, the numbers were $1,429 (16%) at small firms compared to $1,204 (14%) at large firms.
The report also found variations in overall premiums and health benefits across nine different industries. For example, healthcare firms paid the highest premiums for family coverage—an average of $26,864—followed by transportation/communications/utilities at $26,601. Companies in agriculture, mining, and construction paid the lowest premiums, an average of $22,654.
There were wide variations by industry in terms of how many firms offer any health benefits. Among state and local government entities, 83% offered health benefits, followed by transportation/communications/utilities (69%), manufacturing (65%), wholesale (62%), healthcare (58%), and finance (56%). Just 40% of retail businesses and 49% of agriculture/mining/construction businesses offered health benefits.
Health Screening Coverage
The KFF report did not include data about insurance coverage for clinical laboratory services. However, one section did address employer willingness to provide opportunities for health screening.
Among large businesses, 56% offered health risk assessments, in which individuals answer questions about their medical history, lifestyle, and other areas relevant to their health risks. A smaller number (44%) offer biometric screening, which “could include meeting a target body mass index (BMI) or cholesterol level, but not goals related to smoking,” the report said. Only 9% of small businesses offered biometric screening, the report found.
KFF conducted its survey between January and July 2024 among a random selection of public and private employers with at least three workers. The survey excluded federal government entities but included state and local government. A total of 2,142 employers responded.
Inflation during this current administration definitely hit consumers in the health insurance premium pocketbook. At the same time providers raised their own prices making it more expensive for people with HDHPs to come up with the cash required by their annual deductible. While clinical laboratory and genetic testing are not highlighted in KFF’s survey, they certainly play a role in increasing costs to healthcare consumers and are worth considering.
Request for money upfront comes at a time when many patients already struggle with medical debt
In its reporting of healthcare trends gathering momentum, a national newspaper caused quite a stir this spring when it published a story documenting how some hospitals now require patients to pay in advance of specified surgeries and procedures. Hospitals are recognizing what clinical laboratories have long known—a larger proportion of Americans do not have the cash to pay a medical bill.
Hospitals and surgery centers are requesting advanced payment for elective procedures such as knee replacements, CT scans, and childbirth procedures, according to an Advisory Board daily briefing.
“In some cases, they may also have a contract with an insurance company. And in that contract are terms that stipulate hospitals need to collect deductibles or co-insurance before a procedure,” Evans added.
According to Bankrate’s 2024 Annual Emergency Savings Report, nearly half of all American’s would be unable to pay cash for an unplanned $1,000 bill. Therefore, one wonders why hospitals would attempt to extract payments from patients in advance of medical visits and clinical laboratory testing. Wouldn’t that just reduce the number of patients electing to undergo needed surgeries and other costly procedures? Nevertheless, it appears that many hospitals struggling financially are doing just that, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Genetic testing laboratories have a similar problem because of high-deductible health plans ($5K/year for individual, $12K/year for family). It means that many patients, even with insurance, struggle to pay a $1,000 to $5,000 bill for a genetic test.
Requesting payment from patients before healthcare visits is not new. However, the practice is on the rise and comes at a time when consumers are already struggling to make ends meet.
“Hospitals collected (in Q1 2024) about 23% of what patients owed them before they set foot in a hospital or doctor’s office. That’s up from about 20% in the same period a year earlier,” said reporter Melanie Evans (above) of The Wall Street Journal, referring to data from 1,850 hospitals analyzed by Kodiak Solutions. Genetic testing laboratories experience similar challenges getting paid due to many people struggling with high deductible health plans. (Photo copyright: LinkedIn.)
Price Transparency Behind Upfront Payments
According to a recent KFF survey of US families, “about half of adults would be unable to pay an unexpected medical bill of $500 in full without going into debt.”
Regardless, asking for payment for nonemergency care has become more common as people increasingly choose health plans with high-deductibles and amid the push for greater price transparency, according to Richard Gundling, Senior Vice President, Content and Professional Practice Guidance at Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), in an interview with Advisory Board.
“It’s very common if not the norm” for hospitals to give patients a cost estimate and ask for advance payment, Gundling stated during the interview.
In fact, healthcare providers and insurers are required to shared charges and estimates as part of newly implemented federal rules. According to the American Hospital Association (AHA) those statutes and rules include:
The Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule (effective January 2021) which requires hospitals to publicly post “standard charges” via machine readable files.
The No Surprises Act which mandates the sharing of “good faith estimates” with uninsured/self-pay patients for most scheduled services and also requires insurers to provide explanation of benefits to enrollees.
According to Consumer Reports, hospitals are finding consumers less reliable payers than insurance companies. “No one would say, ‘Pay up or we won’t treat you.’ But we’re saying that, ‘You have a large out-of-pocket cost, and we want to know how are you going to pay for it,’” explained Jonathan Wiik, Vice President of Health Insights at FinThrive, a revenue cycle management company.
Razor Thin Hospital Margins
For their part, hospitals, health systems, and medical practices wrote off $17.4 billion in bad debt in 2023, Kodiak Solutions, an Indianapolis-based healthcare consulting and software company, reported in a news release.
“With the amounts that health plans require patients to pay continuing to grow, provider organizations need a strategy to avoid intensifying pressure on their already thin margins,” said Colleen Hall, Senior Vice President, Revenue Cycle, Kodiak, in the news release.
“Patient collections have become an increasingly difficult challenge for hospitals due primarily to a shift in payer mix. Because of rising deductibles and increased patient responsibility, the percentage of healthcare provider revenue collected directly from patients increased to more than 30% from less than 10% over 10 years,” the HFMA noted.
Thus, the financial tension being experienced by both patients and providers, and the need for patients to prepay for some treatment, are extreme challenges. The situation may call for clinical laboratory leaders to not only focus on quality testing and efficient workflow, but also affordability and access to services.
Though ACA reforms may have slowed healthcare spending, rapidly increasing deductibles and cost sharing requirements have many experts questioning if patients can afford care at all, despite the increased availability of insurance coverage
Much of the debate surrounding efforts to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has centered on premiums as a central facet of out-of-pocket spending. However, new data from a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey reveals that premiums are only one factor affecting consumers’ ability to pay healthcare bills. High-deductible health plans (HDHPs) are another culprit. This directly impacts clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups that find revenues down as more American’s avoid costs by delaying or opting out of testing and treatments.
The KFF report highlights both the complexity of managing healthcare costs and how the current focus on premium prices might miss other important considerations that make healthcare inaccessible to many Americans.
High Deductibles and Consumers’ Lack of Savings
An increasing number of insurance plans now include high deductibles—particularly in the individual markets, though employer-based insurance plans are experiencing steady increases as well.
This leaves consumers facing larger bills and making tough decisions about whether their healthcare is affordable—even with insurance.
When healthcare consumers cannot afford the out-of-pocket costs of healthcare, they are less likely to schedule wellness visits, adhere to treatments, or follow through on physician-ordered clinical laboratory tests they don’t consider essential to their well-being or simply cannot afford.
Even when they follow protocols and recommendations, that does not mean patients will be able to pay medical laboratories for tests performed, or anatomic pathology groups for specialized services, when the bill comes due.
The Ever-Growing Deductible Dilemma
In its 2017 study, “Do Health Plan Enrollees have Enough Money to Pay Cost Sharing?,” the KFF compares median data on liquid assets from 6,254 single and multi-person households—spanning a range of incomes and age brackets—to the average cost of both standard employer-based insurance and individual market insurance deductibles.
They further note that their data modeling and estimates present a “conservative estimate,” because chronic conditions might cause an extended period of out-of-pocket spending, and that median assets might not be available at a single time or throughout the year.
Concerning a previous 2016 KFF study on high-deductible insurance plans, the authors noted in a press release, “In 2016, 83% of covered workers face a deductible for single coverage, which averages $1,478. That’s up $159 or 12% from 2015, and $486 or 49% since 2011. The average deductible for workers who face one is higher for workers in small firms (three to 199 employers) than in large firms ($2,069 vs. $1,238).”
In the press release following KFF’s 2016 survey, Drew Altman, CEO (above), Kaiser Family Foundation, noted, “We’re seeing premiums rising at historically slow rates, which helps workers and employers alike, but it’s made possible in part by the more rapid rise in the deductibles workers must pay.” (Image copyright: Kaiser Family Foundation.)
In their latest look at deductibles and out-of-pocket spending, the KFF study authors note, “About half (53%) of single-person non-elderly households could pay the $2,000 from their liquid assets towards cost sharing, and only 37% could pay $6,000, which … was less than the maximum out-of-pocket limit for single coverage in 2016. For multi-person families, 47% could pay $4,000 from their liquid assets for cost sharing, while only 35% could pay $12,000.”
This sets the stage for the grim picture now facing many Americans. Despite increased access to medical insurance, being able to use the insurance to obtain care can be a struggle for a sizeable part of the lower to middle class population.
Creating a More Affordable Future for Healthcare
Data from the Q1 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that growth in high-deductible plans might skew these numbers further still. They found that the number of persons under the age of 65 enrolled in HDHPs increased from 25.3% in 2010 to 40.0% in the first quarter of 2016 despite uninsured rates dropping from 22.3% to 11.9% over the same period.
In the 2017 study, KFF outlines the complexity of the issue: “There are significant differences across the income spectrum … For example, 63% of multi-person households with incomes of 400% of poverty or more could pay $12,000 from liquid assets for cost sharing, compared with only 18% of households with incomes between 150% and 400% of poverty, and 4% of households with incomes below 150% of poverty.”
While there are no simple answers to address today’s increasing deductibles, KFF emphasizes the importance of looking at the bigger picture.
“Much of the discussion around affordability has centered on premium costs. A broader notion of affordability will have to focus on the ability of families,” they note. “To adequately address the issue of affordability of health insurance, reform proposals should be evaluated on the affordability of out-of-pocket costs, especially for low and moderate-income families, and be sensitive to the financial impacts that high cost sharing will have on financial wellbeing.”
In the meantime, lack of access to preventative care and regular checkups can increase long-term healthcare costs and health risks, creating a spiral of financial concerns for patients as well as the healthcare professionals and the clinical laboratories serving them.
Recognizing the need to serve patients with high-deductible health plans, hospital systems are opening healthcare centers in outpatient settings where patients can receive care and undergo procedures—including clinical laboratory tests—more conveniently and for less cost
Health systems are putting medical imaging services, such as MRIs, in strip malls and shopping centers as a way to make it easier for patients. Such locations can also offer lower-cost procedures because of lower overhead compared to imaging centers located in hospitals. This trend to offer patients more convenient service at a lower cost is something that clinical laboratory managers and pathologists should watch and understand.
One driver behind this trend is the growing number of Americans enrolled in High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs), where deductibles can exceed $6,000 for individuals and $12,000 for families. With such high deductibles, patients are now keenly focused on the cost of their healthcare. Medical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups have been impacted by this trend, as more patients shell out cash to pay for walk-in procedures and providers must collect full payments for services rendered.
Hospitals and health systems recognize the increased demand for outpatient, lower-priced medical services, along with price transparency. Patients with HDHPs are one reason why hospital bad debt is growing.
Healthcare Shopping Drives Lower Costs and Convenience
Price shopping on the Internet for medical services also is becoming more popular due to the availability of online doctor and facility ratings and easily-accessible price comparisons.
There are more than 7,000 stand-alone imaging centers in the US that operate independently of hospitals. About 70% of diagnostic imaging services occur in hospital settings with the other 30% performed in outpatient facilities.
According to Amino, a healthcare transparency company based in San Francisco, the cost for an MRI can vary significantly depending on where a patient lives and what type of facility is utilized for the test. Their research found that the cost of a limb MRI can range from hundreds of dollars at a freestanding facility to as much as $4,000 at a hospital. In some states, the price difference between getting an MRI at a hospital versus a stand-alone facility was almost $2,000. The average cost of having an MRI performed in a hospital setting is $2600.
Based on data from Amino, the graphic above illustrates the wide range of prices for MRIs throughout the country, and the cost disparity between hospital and free-standing medical imaging centers. In the future, pathologists and clinical laboratory managers can expect to see the publication of similar graphs that show the variation in the cost of clinical laboratory tests and anatomic pathology procedures, not just by state, but by individual laboratories. (Graphic copyright: MBO.)
Smart Choice MRI, based in Mequon, Wis., charges a maximum price of $600 for an MRI. The company now has 17 locations in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, but plans to have 90 facilities within the next three years.
“The rise of high deductible health plans has fueled consumers who understand their options and demand a higher level of service from their providers,” Rick Anderson, Chief Executive Officer of Smart Choice MRI told the StarTribune. “Quality, service-focused care at a fair, transparent price has never been more important.”
Anderson added that his company can handle 94% of MRI procedures in their convenient, freestanding imaging facilities.
“I think the quality is very good, but we’ve combined the cost and quality, and most importantly the convenience of being in the neighborhood where people are shopping,” Anderson said. “If you look at our Richfield (Minnesota) location, we’re literally next to SuperTarget, Caribou Coffee, Noodles and Company, and Qdoba.”
Public and Private Health Insurers Shift Payments to Free-standing Facilities
Anthem recently announced they will no longer pay for outpatient MRIs and CT scans performed at hospitals in almost all of the states where the health insurer does business. They are requiring patients to have the tests performed in free-standing imaging facilities in an effort to cut costs and lower premiums. This change could affect 4.5 million people in 13 of the 14 states Anthem serves, with New Hampshire being the exception.
Diagnostic imaging is not the only medical service transitioning to outpatient facilities.
In July, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it is considering payment approval for total hip and knee replacements performed in outpatient settings. This change could go into effect as early as next year.
According to Steve Miller, Chief Operating Officer at Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, an estimated 25-50% of joint replacements could be performed on an outpatient basis.
“There’s more and more comfort among surgeons who are coming out of residencies where they trained to do surgeries on an outpatient basis,” Miller told Modern Healthcare. “The volumes are doubling year over year.”
Surgeons Approve of Free-standing Surgery Centers
There are currently more than 5,500 ambulatory surgery centers in the country and upwards of 200 of those facilities are performing outpatient joint replacement procedures. Three years ago, there were only around 25 facilities providing these services.
In 2015, there were more than 658,000 total hip and knee replacements performed on Medicare beneficiaries, according to CMS data. In 2014, the government paid more than $7 billion for the hospitalization costs of these two procedures. The CMS estimates that the cost for uncomplicated knee replacement surgeries in 2018 will be $12,381 for an inpatient procedure and $9,913 for the outpatient rate.
Physicians feel that performing joint replacements in outpatient facilities could reduce costs by up to 50%.
“I could do maybe 20% of my Medicare patients on an outpatient basis, as long as they have the support and structure at home to help them recover,” said Matthew Weresh, MD, a physician at Des Moines Orthopedic Surgeons (DMOS) in the Modern Healthcare article. “It’s a great move by Medicare.” DMOS plans to begin performing joint replacements at an ambulatory surgery center later this year.
Pathologists would be wise to monitor this trend and anticipate how anatomic pathology services might shift towards lower-cost settings. For clinical laboratories, this trend further illustrates the need to prepare for more consumers paying cash for their medical services and seeking cost-effective, high-quality options.
Medical laboratories today struggle to submit clean claims and be promptly and adequately reimbursed as health insurers institute burdensome requirements and audit more labs
Across the nation, clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups of all sizes struggle to get payment for lab test claims. Veteran lab executives say they cannot remember any time in the past when medical laboratories were challenged on the front-end with getting lab test claims paid while also dealing on the back-end with ever-tougher audits and unprecedented recoupment demands.
These issues center upon the new policies adopted by the Medicare program and private health insurers that make it more difficult for many clinical laboratories to be in-network providers, to obtain favorable coverage guidelines for their tests, and to have the documentation requested when auditors show up to inspect lab test claims. This is true whether the audit is conducted by a Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) or a team from a private health insurer.
Source of Financial Pressure on Medical Laboratories in US
Another source of financial pressure on medical laboratories in the United States today is the ongoing increase in the number of patients who have high-deductible health plans—whether from their employer or from the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplace (AKA, health exchanges). The individual and family annual deductibles for these plans typically start at around $5,000 and go to $10,000 or more. Many labs are experiencing big increases in patient bad debt because they don’t have the capability to collect payment from patients when they show up in patient service centers (PSCs) to provide specimens.
Some of these developments make it timely to ask the question: Is it a trend for payers to gang up on clinical laboratories and pathology groups and make it tougher for them to be paid for the lab tests they perform? Multiple factors can be identified to support this thesis.
“Is it a coincidence that, in recent years, so many payers are initiating numerous requirements that add complexity to how labs submit claims for lab tests and how they get paid?” asked Richard Faherty of RLF Consulting LLC. Faherty was formerly Executive Vice President, Administration, with BioReference Laboratories, Inc. “I can track four distinct developments that, collectively, mean that fewer lab claims get paid, expose clinical laboratories to extremely rigorous audits with larger recoupment demands, and heighten the risk of fraud and abuse allegations due to use of contract or third-party sales and marketing representatives who represent independent medical lab companies.”
Faherty described the first of his four developments as prior-authorization requirements for molecular and genetic tests. “Health insurers are reacting to the explosion in molecular and genetic testing—both in the number of unique assays that a doctor can order and the volume of orders for these often-expensive tests—by establishing stringent prior-authorization requirements,” he noted.
More Prior-Authorization Requirements for Molecular, Genetic Tests
“At the moment, many clinical lab companies and pathology groups are attempting to understand the prior-authorization programs established by Anthem (which became effective on July 1) and UnitedHealthcare (which became effective on November 1),” explained Faherty. “Just these two prior-authorization programs now cover as many as 80 million beneficiaries. There are plenty of complaints from physicians and lab companies because the systems payers require them to use are not well-designed and quite time-consuming.
“One consequence is that many lab executives complain that they are not getting paid for genetic tests because their client physicians are unable to get the necessary prior authorization—yet the lab decides to perform the test to support good patient care even though it knows it won’t be paid.”
Richard Faherty (left), CEO, RLF Consulting LLC, and formerly with Bio-Reference Laboratories, Inc., will moderate this critical webinar. Joining him will be Rina Wolf (center), Vice President, Commercialization Strategies, Consulting and Industry Affairs, XIFIN, Inc., and Karen S. Lovitch (right), JD, Practice Leader, Health Law Practice, Mintz Levin, PC, Washington, DC. The webinar takes place Wednesday, December 6, 2017, at 2 p.m. EST; 1 p.m. CST; 12 p.m. MST; 11 a.m. PST. Click here to register. (Photo copyright: Dark Intelligence Group.)
Payers Checking on How Clinical Laboratories Bill, Collect from Patients
Faherty’s second trend involves how medical lab companies are billing and collecting the amounts due from patients. “Most payers now pay close attention to how clinical laboratories bill patients for co-pays, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket amounts that are required by the patients’ health plans,” he commented. “Labs struggle with this for two reasons.
“One reason is the fact that tens of millions of Americans currently have high-deductible health insurance plans,” said Faherty. “In these cases, medical laboratories often must collect 100% of the cost of lab testing directly from the patients. The second reason is the failure of many independent lab companies to properly and diligently balance-bill their patients. This puts these labs at risk of multiple fraud and abuse issues.”
Many Medical Lab Companies Undergoing More Rigorous Audits by Payers
Faherty considers trend number three to be payers’ expanding use of rigorous audits of lab test claims. “In the past, it was relatively uncommon for a clinical lab company or pathology group to undergo audits of their lab test claims,” he observed. “That has changed in a dramatic way. Today, the Medicare program has increased the number of private auditors that visit labs to inspect lab test claims. At the same time, private health insurers are ramping up the number and intensity of the audits they conduct of lab test claims and substantially increasing their demands for recoupment without audit.
“One consequence of these audits is that medical laboratories are being hit with substantial claims for recoupment,” noted Faherty. “I am aware of multiple genetic testing companies that have been hit with a Medicare recoupment amount equal to two or three years of the lab’s annual revenue. Some have filed bankruptcy because the appeals process can take three to four years.”
Are Contract Lab Sales Reps More Likely to Offer Physicians Inducements?
Faherty’s fourth significant trend involves the greater use of independent contractors that handle lab test sales and marketing for clinical lab companies. “This trend affects both labs that use third-party lab sales reps and labs that don’t,” he said. “Labs that use contract sales and marketing representatives do not have direct control over the sales practices of these contractors. There is ample evidence that some independent lab sales contractors are willing to pay inducements to physicians in exchange for their lab test referrals.
“This is a problem in two dimensions,” noted Faherty. “On one hand, clinical lab companies that use third-party sales contractors don’t have full control over the marketing practices of these sales representatives. Yet, if federal and state prosecutors can show violations of anti-kickback and self-referral laws, then the lab company is equally liable. In certain cases, government attorneys have even gone after executives on a personal basis.
“On the other hand, I am hearing lab executives complain now that a substantial number of office-based physicians are so used to various forms of inducement offered by third-party sales representatives that the lab’s in-house sales force cannot convince those physicians to use their lab company without a comparable inducement. If true, this is a fundamental shift in the competitive market for lab testing services and it puts labs unwilling to pay similar inducements to physicians at a disadvantage.”
These four trends describe the challenges faced by every clinical laboratory, hospital laboratory outreach program, and pathology group when attempting to provide lab testing services to office-based physicians in a fully-compliant manner and be paid adequately and on time by health insurers.
Why Some Labs Continue to Be Successful and What They Can Teach You
These four trends may also explain why many medical lab companies are dealing with falling revenue and encountering financial difficulty. However, there continue to be independent lab companies that have consistent success with their coding, billing, and collections effort. These labs put extra effort into aligning their business practices with the requirements of the Medicare program and private health insurers.
Three esteemed experts in the field will provide you with the inside scoop on the best responses and actions your clinical lab and pathology group can take to address these major changes and unwelcome developments. Presenting will be:
· Moderating will be Richard Faherty of RLF Consulting LLC, and formerly with Bio-Reference Laboratories, Inc.
Special Webinar with Insights on How Your Lab Can Collect the Money It’s Due
To register for the webinar and see details about the topics to be discussed, use this link (or copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://pathologywebinars.com/how-to-prepare-your-lab-for-2018-essential-insights-into-new-payer-challenges-with-lab-audits-patient-billing-out-of-network-claims-and-heightened-scrutiny-of-lab-sales-practices/).
This is an essential webinar for any pathologist or lab manager wanting to improve collected revenue from lab test claims and to improve lab compliance. During the webinar, any single idea or action your lab can take away could result in increasing collected revenue by tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of dollars. That makes this webinar the smartest investment you can make for your lab’s legal and billing/collection teams.
