Jun 8, 2012 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will need a strategy for handling incidental findings
When a genetic test for a certain type of cancer provides additional information that could affect the patient’s health, what is the ethical course of action for pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists? Should this information be disclosed to the physician who ordered that cancer test? In turn, should that physician inform his or her patient about these “incidental findings?”
All medical laboratory professionals will soon find themselves regularly dealing with this challenge because of the rapid increase in the number of molecular diagnostic assays and genetic tests that produce large quantities of data about the patient. (more…)
Oct 29, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Uncategorized
Trend may affect workforce needs of clinical pathology laboratories, according to JAMA study
Doctors now work fewer hours than lawyers! This finding has serious implications for the healthcare industry in coming years. Clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups will want to understand how this trend might affect their service relationships with physicians.
Researchers determined that—for the first time—doctors are working fewer hours than lawyers. They predict this trend could lead to doctor shortages as more and more baby boomer physicians retire. This study was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
In an interview with a U.S. News and World Report reporter, the study’s lead author, Douglas Staiger, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire stated, “This is an unprecedented decline that we haven’t seen before in physicians, and you don’t see it for other professions, like lawyers.”
Three Decades of Census Data on Doctors’ Work Hours
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