Popular Science Review Finds Seven At-Home COVID-19 Antigen Tests ‘Easy to Use’ and ‘An Important Tool to Slow Spread of the Coronavirus’

    In a letter, Congress urged the HHS Secretary to conduct “vigorous oversight and enforces full compliance with the final rule”     Analysis of more than 3,100 hospital websites by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has found “hundreds” containing embedded code that prevents search engines from displaying the hospitals’ prices. This is contrary to the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule (84 FR 65524), passed in November 2019, which requires hospitals to “establish, update,...

Two Florida Clinical Laboratory COVID-19 Test Contracts Come Under Scrutiny

One medical testing company was led by a convicted felon, another was accused of delays and unreliable results Like many states, Florida has worked hard to quickly ramp up diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 illness. For the most part this has been a good thing. However, local media in that state reported problems with two no-bid contracts for clinical laboratory testing, including one with a Dallas-based company whose founder pleaded guilty last year to...

New Value-Based Payment Model for Oncology Care Could Affect How Pathologists and Medical Laboratories Get Paid for Their Services

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is considering adding clinical laboratory services to bundled payments in its proposed Oncology Care First model Anatomic pathologists, surgical pathologists, and medical laboratories could find some of their services shifted to a bundled payment scheme as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) considers a new value-based alternative payment model (APM) for providers of cancer care. CMMI, an organization within the Centers for...

Popularity of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Tests Still Growing, Regardless of Concerns from Provider and Privacy Organizations

For blood brothers Quest and LabCorp this is good news, since the two medical laboratory companies perform most of the testing for the biggest DTC genetic test developers Should clinical laboratories be concerned about direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests? Despite alerts from healthcare organizations about the accuracy of DTC genetic testing—as well as calls from privacy organizations to give DTC customers more control over the use of their genetic data—millions of people have already taken...

Quest Diagnostics Picks Rusckowski as New President and CEO to Lead the Nation’s Largest Clinical Pathology Company

Many challenges ahead for Rusckowski because of healthcare’s unfolding transformation Yesterday, after the stock markets closed, Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX) issued a press release naming Stephen H. Rusckowski as its new President and CEO. He will assume his duties on May 1, 2012. Quest Diagnostics is the nation’s largest clinical laboratory company. Along with the appointment of its new President and CEO, Quest Diagnostics also announced that Daniel C. Stanzione, Ph.D., would...
;