Apr 22, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
As out-of-pocket costs for health care rise, consumers are motivated to manage their own care and insurers are providing them tools to make the job easier. The latest innovation, which is available exclusively to WellPoint and North Carolina Blues plan members, is a consumer rating system from Zagat that helps people shop for doctors.
This interesting new development was recently the subject of a detailed intelligence briefing in April 6, 2009 issue of The Dark Report. The Zagat Health Survey is designed to be both doctor friendly and easy for patients to use. It does not address physician quality. Rather, it offers a snapshot of individual physicians-based on criteria that impact the consumer experience. Clinical laboratory managers and pathologists will eventually need to respond to this trend. That’s because, as it becomes more common for consumers to rate providers, health plans will begin asking their beneficiaries to rate the service they received from medical laboratory test providers.
Patients are asked to rate a physician on four criteria, using a scale of 0 to 3, with 3 being excellent. Zagat then averages consumer scores for a physician and multiplies by 10 to create the familiar Zagat 0-30 number ratings. Reviewers are also asked if they would recommend the doctor to other plan members.
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Apr 17, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Bundled Payment Demonstration Project Changes How Labs Would Be Paid
Efforts in the nation’s capital to reform healthcare are still in the formative stage as the new President and the new Congress consider various approaches. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) started the new year by launching pilots for a bundled-service payment scheme. Not only may this be the beginning of the end of the fee-for-service payment system, but it has important implications for clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.
The bundled payment system demonstration projects are a first step to what’s coming next. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, better known as MedPAC , released its blueprint for reforming the delivery system to Congress on March 17 in its annual Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy.
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Apr 13, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Recent consensus sets stage for further progress with universal patient health records (PHRs)
Efforts to advance use of a universal electronic patient health record (PHR) got a boost recently. The creation of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) moved closer to reality with announcement of consensus among more than 100 stakeholders on guidelines for ensuring consumer-friendly features, operational efficiencies, privacy, and security.
Connecting for Health, a public-private collaboration of health sector organizations and technology innovators, developed a common framework for building a network of networks. The framework provides specific technology, practice and policy approaches for consumers to securely obtain copies of their personal health records (PHRs) from various provider sources that support an online PHR service. Once stored on services like GoogleHealth or Healthvault, PHRs can be instantly shared with trusted health providers.
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Apr 10, 2009 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
New diagnostic and treatment approach will require close interaction with Pathologists
There’s a novel diagnostic device designed to detect sepsis that also has to potential to engage the pathologist as part of the bedside care team. It is also an example of how nanotechnology and magnetism are being combined in ways that may support in vivo diagnosis and treatment.
Created by a research scientist at Children’s Hospital Boston, this new device uses magnetism to quickly pull disease pathogens out of infected blood. Experts predict it could become the first line of defense for sepsis, a disease which kills about 200,000 Americans each year.
The system works by drawing the patient’s blood and adding tiny magnetic beads, pre-coated with antibodies against specific pathogens, such as Candida albicans. The blood is run through a microfluidic system in which two liquid flow streams run side by side without mixing. One channel contains blood and the other contains a saline-based collection fluid. The beads bind to the pathogens. A magnet then pulls them, along with the pathogens, into the collection fluid. The collection fluid is ultimately discarded, and the cleansed blood reintroduced into the patient.
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Apr 7, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Here in Chicago at the huge HIMSS meeting, people are paying attention to lab testing
Dateline: Chicago, IL-Most physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers are quite familiar with the “Five Rights of Medication.” If one innovative healthcare company is successful, soon all these folks will be equally familiar with the newly-articulated “Five Rights of Laboratory Testing,” which emphasizes that every patient is entitled to receive the proper benefits from laboratory testing.
Sunquest Information Systems, Inc has launched a campaign to promote the Five Rights of Laboratory Testing. The goal is to increase awareness among all healthcare workers of the need to exercise vigilance when ordering laboratory tests and using laboratory test data in patient care decisions.
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