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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Tough Economic Times Motivate Clinical Laboratories to Cut Costs by Year End

Upcoming Lab Quality Confab features “world class” cost-cutting methods and experts

Belt-tightening by clinical labs and pathology groups continues as the current economic recession approaches the end of its second full year. To generate additional cash, a significant number of labs report aggressive belt-tightening on the operations side of the business.

This is particularly true of hospital and health system labs. Many have been asked by their administration to reduce spending below budgeted levels in order to allow the parent hospital to accumulate cash. Since baseline budgets for most hospital labs are already established at parsimonious levels, this compounds the difficulty of cutting costs to free up cash for the parent hospital.
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St. Elizabeth Medical Center May Be First U.S. Hospital to Hold Three ISO Accreditations

Utica Hospital holds accreditation in ISO 9001 and 14001, may pursue 15189

When the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved DNV Healthcare, Inc. , of Cincinnati, Ohio, to accredit hospitals in the United States last fall, it changed the accreditation landscape significantly. A division of Det Norske Veritas of Oslo, Norway, DNV Healthcare is the first new hospital accreditation competitor for The Joint Commission http://www.jointcommission.org in 40 years. The Joint Commission is the longtime leader in hospital accreditation in the United States.

Among the first hospitals to use this new Medicare accreditation program was St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica, New York. One compelling reason why St. Elizabeth used DNV to pursue Medicare accreditation was that it already held ISO 9001 accreditation and the DNV accreditation process enables hospitals to earn accreditation under both programs. Based in its successful experience with DNV and with ISO 9001, St. Elizabeth’s administrators and clinical laboratory managers expect to pursue ISO 15189:Medical Laboratories accreditation within the next two years.

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