Aug 11, 2014 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
This spring, researchers at the VA Hospital in Houston published a study revealing that one in 20 patients in outpatient settings are misdiagnosed
Publication of new peer-reviewed clinical studies indicates that, within the United States, more than 5% of outpatients—or 12 million people—are misdiagnosed annually. Few pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists would dispute this number because every day they see the best and the worst of how physicians use medical laboratory tests.
These findings were reported in a study published in the April edition of the British Medical Journal, BMJ Quality & Safety. (more…)
May 12, 2014 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
National survey of 1,768 family practice and internal medicine specialists determines that they are struggling to stay current with changing guidelines for ordering and interpreting medical laboratory tests
Recent publication of a new study confirms what pathologists and medical laboratory professionals have known for years: a significant number of primary care physicians acknowledge that they sometimes are uncertain about which clinical laboratory test is the most appropriate one to order. These same doctors also admit that they are often also uncertain how to interpret the results of some medical laboratory tests.
Physicians Uncertain when Ordering Clinical Laboratory Tests
These are two conclusions resulting from a survey published in the March-April edition of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). It is important that clinical laboratory administrators and pathologists understand the survey findings for two important reasons.
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Oct 30, 2013 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Extraneous tissue cross-contamination found in all participating pathology laboratories Cross-tissue contamination, regardless of specimen volume or how frequently reagents were changed
Pathologists and histotechnologists have long known that traditional methods of processing tissue for diagnosis have the potential to cross-contaminate human biopsy specimens. This risk to patient safety and diagnostic accuracy was accepted over the decades because of the limitations of technology and inability to more precisely measure the performance of individual work processes in the histology laboratory.
In recent years, two things have begun to change this long-standing status quo in medical laboratories. These developments now make it possible to more accurately measure the performance of histology work processes. In turn, this allows an understanding of the true rate of errors that happen from the time a human biopsy specimen arrives in the anatomic pathology laboratory until the completed slides are ready to be diagnosed by a pathologist. (more…)
Sep 4, 2013 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Digital Pathology, Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations, News From Dark Daily
As medical laboratories struggle to reduce costs and squeeze their budgets, it is essential that the lab’s quality assurance/quality control program is run properly to protect and enhance the analytical integrity of lab test results
When does budget cutting in a clinical laboratory begin to undermine the accuracy and analytical integrity of the medical laboratory test results produced by the laboratory?
This question is apparently a subject of much discussion within some lab organizations where aggressive cost reduction programs are shrinking lab staff and reducing funds spent on controls and similar QA/QC resources.
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Sep 7, 2011 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Clinical laboratory managers are often part of the ER’s process improvement team
Hospital emergency rooms (ER) across the country are intensifying their focus on improving patient safety and reducing errors. The cost of malpractice lawsuits filed after errors in emergency rooms is a major reason why growing numbers of hospitals are initiating formal programs to identify and eliminate the source of errors and wrong care provided to patients.
It probably won’t surprise most pathologists and clinical laboratory managers to learn that diagnostic errors are one significant source of malpractice claims that result from care provided by hospital emergency rooms, which can often be chaotic and overcrowded. Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that a large percentage of medical errors in hospitals—and the resulting malpractice suits—occur because of mistakes in the emergency room. Studies of closed claims show that 37% to 55% of the malpractice suits are attributable to diagnostic errors. (more…)
