Jun 10, 2013 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Uncategorized
A newspaper in San Francisco featured a story about the patient’s complaint about being overcharged thousands of dollars by the hospital for medical laboratory tests
Here’s how a community hospital that charges inpatient prices for clinical laboratory testing to a walk-up customer find itself at the center of a media news storm. In California, a newspaper trumpeted the story of an unhappy consumer stuck with a $4,316.55 bill for a panel of medical lab tests that a national lab would have performed for just $464, about 90% cheaper!
Cautionary Tale for Medical Laboratories and Pathology Groups
Price transparency is a major trend in healthcare and consumers are catching on quickly. This raises the stakes for any hospital, medical laboratory, and anatomic pathology group that is slow to respond to the growing number of consumers who now price-shop whenever they need clinical laboratory tests. (more…)
Sep 10, 2012 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Case in Los Angeles may create a precedent for liability in research laboratory settings as well as for accidents in pathology or clinical laboratories
Clinical chemists, particularly those working in academic center medical laboratories and research labs, may be interested in the progress of a criminal case that was filed in California following the death of a 23-year-old research associate. She died in 2008 while conducting experiments in a chemistry laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Court proceedings are moving forward and the university has entered a settlement. That leaves the felony charges against the professor to be resolved. Some knowledgeable observers have suggested that the chemistry professor has been “thrown under the bus” by his academic institution. On that point alone, this case will be informational to professors of clinical chemistry, pathology, and medical laboratory medicine.
Criminal Charges Filed Against Chemistry Professor and UC Regents
On December 27, 2011, following an investigation of this lab accident, the District Attorney’s office for Los Angeles County filed three criminal counts against the Regents of the University of California and Patrick G. Harran, Ph.D., who is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. The defendants were charged with three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards, resulting in the death of Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji, who was the research assistant working in the chemistry research laboratory. (more…)
Jul 30, 2012 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Uncategorized
Clinical labs and pathology groups will want to be prepared for cash-paying patients who demand discounted prices for medical laboratory tests
For decades, it has typically been difficult for a patient to get, in advance of treatment, a specific price from a healthcare provider. This has been true, whether the provider was a hospital, an office-based physician, or an ancillary clinical service. This lack of “price transparency” makes it difficult for patients to shop for healthcare providers—including clinical laboratories—based on the same combination of quality and price that they use to make other important purchases in their lives.
Recently, the Los Angeles Times looked into the arcane world of healthcare pricing. Its reporter was astonished to discover that, in California, it was possible for a cash-paying patient to be charged a price by a hospital that was just 16% of the “patient list price.” Furthermore, this cash price was less than half of what that hospital had negotiated with at least one major health plan! (more…)
May 23, 2012 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Pathology
Goal of unique collaboration is to give physicians a more accurate way to diagnose and treat many types of cancer
Two noteworthy healthcare organizations will collaborate with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to explore how IBM’s Watson can be used to help physicians deliver improved outcomes to patients. The collaboration involves one major health insurer and a prominent academic medical center in Los Angeles.
WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP) will interact with oncology experts at the Cedars-Sinai Cancer Institute in Los Angeles to “educate” and program Watson as a physician’s assistant. What makes this particularly interesting for anatomic pathologists is the potential of this project to marry advances in molecular diagnostics with artificial intelligence in ways that allow physicians to diagnose different cancers earlier and with greater accuracy.
In its story about this development, the Los Angeles Times reported that, per IBM, physicians at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute will be the first to use the Watson technology.
The institute’s doctors will serve as advisers and lend expertise to help shape the initiative to develop effective ways to use Watson. “Cedars Sinai will provide the guidelines and insights to put into Watson,” stated Manoj Saxena, General Manager of IBM Watson Solutions, in a story published by Forbes Magazine.
Watson is IBM’s computing system that incorporates deep question answering technology that allows it to search quickly through vast amounts of data, then process it and analyze it in a way similar to that of the human brain. The Watson system is capable of processing the equivalent of about 200 million pages of data in about three seconds, Forbes reported.
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Oct 8, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
ACO model encourages clinical integration involving hospitals and office-based physicians
Here in Texas, the portion of the Obamacare Health Law that creates Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and an ACO payment mechanism has caught the full attention of the state’s largest multi-hospital health systems. Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers across the nation should take this activity in Texas as an early sign that ACOs are a care delivery model that must be taken seriously.
That’s because two things are happening in Texas. First, across the state, hospitals and health systems are actively developing ACOs. Second, anticipating restricted access to patients, physicians in smaller practices are starting to either sell their practices to the local hospital/health system, or are merging their group with larger medical practices.
Both activities are likely to fundamentally change the way clinical laboratories in Texas compete for the laboratory test referrals from office-based physicians. This could occur once the ACOs now in organization initiate clinical services.
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