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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Facing the Looming End of Fee-for-Service, Clinical Laboratories and Anatomic Pathology Groups Look for New Business Models

Failing finances at technical pathology laboratories may be the most immediate concern for many pathology group practices

Many clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups now recognize the new reality of the American healthcare system: less reimbursement for laboratory testing. On one hand, the fee-for-service prices for lab tests paid by government and private payers have been aggressively slashed.

On the other hand, all payers have become stubbornly resistant to issuing coverage guidelines and setting adequate prices for the flood of new molecular assays and gene tests coming to market.

These trends have already brought a handful of medical laboratories and pathology practices to the point of bankruptcy, sale, or closure. This is definitely true for the technical laboratories owned by many local pathology groups, which have become unprofitable due to fee cuts. (See below.) (more…)

U.S. Labs Use Lean to Slash Costs and Beat the Economic Recession

Hospital labs come in under budget—while still improving quality, service, and revenue

Despite the recession, most first-rank hospital and health system laboratories in the United States remain upbeat about the financial integrity of their organization and their ability to negotiate the deepest economic recession since 1981-82. One reason this is true is the use of Lean, Six Sigma, and similar continuous improvement methods in the nation’s most progressive clinical labs and pathology groups.

Unlike the recession of 28 years ago, clinical laboratories today can use their experienced Lean teams to trim costs without comparable reductions in quality or service. Not surprisingly, clinical laboratories were quick to recognize how, during this economic recession, their existing Lean and process improvement programs could be tweaked with minimal effort to produce maximum operational savings. Thus, hospital labs during the past 12 months have been able to cut significant cost from their operations without any compromise in quality or the level of service they deliver to referring physicians.

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Offsetting the Rising Costs of Hospital Laboratory Reference and Send-out Testing

Baystate harvests annual savings of 20%+ from simple strategies and steps

In today’s depressed economy, hospital laboratories are scrambling to control costs, reduce unnecessary spending, and get more for every dollar they spend. That is why the constantly-rising cost of reference tests and send-out referrals are now a prime target for laboratory budget-cutters across the United States.

Every laboratory’s reference/send-out test program is a potential budget-buster, for three reasons familiar to every lab director.

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