Jun 22, 2012 | Digital Pathology, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, News From Dark Daily
PeaceHealth and the P4 Medicine Institute will partner to encourage clinical use of systems-biology based diagnostics in community care settings
PACIFIC NORTHWEST—In the Pacific Northwest, PeaceHealth has become the first community health system to join the P4 Medicine Institute http://p4mi.org/ (P4Mi) in an important collaboration to demonstrate practical clinical applications of systems biology in patient care. P4Mi is itself a spin-off of the Institute for Systems Biology that was founded in 2000 by Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D., and several colleagues.
This is a partnership that pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will want to follow. It shows how innovators in molecular biology are pushing forward to engage community hospitals and physicians’ offices in the fast-developing field of systems biology. Their ambitious goal is to achieve early—even pre-symptomatic—diagnosis through the use of multiplex diagnostic assays to analyze genes and proteins.
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Mar 12, 2012 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Managed Care Contracts & Payer Reimbursement
Blame it on employers requiring higher deductibles of employees, often starting at $1,500 per year
Employers continue to increase the amount of deductibles and co-pays in their health benefit plans. This has a direct consequence for clinical laboratories and pathology groups, because it often creates the need to collect more money from patients at the time of service.
A recent survey showed that employers are changing health benefit plans to require workers to pay more money for both insurance coverage and medical care, a story in Modern Healthcare reported. Among such changes to employer-sponsored health plans are higher deductibles, higher premiums, greater employee liability for cost of care, and greater responsibility for health-impacting lifestyle choices.
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Oct 26, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Advanced use of EHRs is one characteristic of nation’s quality leaders
It’s a new study and ranking of top-performing health systems that Dark Daily readers will find interesting and useful. Thomson Reuters announced its latest Top 10 rankings, and identified three main ingredients for attaining higher-quality outcomes. They were: 1) a corporate-level coordinating committee; 2) ample involvement in planning from front-line caregivers; and a system-wide electronic health record system (EHR).
Thomson-Reuters evaluated 252 health systems, representing 1,720 hospitals. Its findings were published exclusively in Modern Healthcare. Its rating was based on five clinical performance measures: mortality, complications, patient safety, length-of-stay and use of evidence-based medicine. No attempt was made to measure financial performance. The health systems study used 2007 information from two public databases, the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare.
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