Apr 16, 2016 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
As independent and hospital-based medical laboratories navigate against the headwinds of shrinking reimbursement levels, it is critical for labs to not only strengthen their relationships with current clientele, but also to grow their client base
A monumental shift is underway within the medical laboratory industry. Given today’s healthcare landscape, accurate testing is no longer enough for labs to remain competitive—fierce competition, falling reimbursement rates, and new quality-based care mandates make excellence in client service and long-term, profitable relationships essential to a laboratory’s survival.
DarkDaily.com is pleased to offer a recently published free White Paper that shares essential information every lab needs in order to achieve the highest level of performance, generate and maintain strong, reliable client relations, and deliver superior, consistent service that bolsters relationships across the continuum of care. (more…)
Nov 23, 2015 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Top-performing medical laboratories are using Lean to help craft RFPs, evaluate TLA options, then implement the automated systems to achieve optimal quality and productivity
In recent years, there’s been a big change in how clinical laboratories purchase total laboratory automation (TLA) solutions, and then integrate this automation into their lab operations. Using a strategy that is somewhat off the radar, top-performing medical laboratories will purchase and install TLA only after applying the principles of Lean to the physical layout and overall workflow within their labs.
This development demonstrates the growing acceptance of Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous process improvement methods at hospital-based laboratories and independent clinical laboratories.
As lab budgets get squeezed down each year and specimen volume increases, pathologists and clinical lab managers face the twin challenges of reducing costs while increasing the quality of their lab testing services. (more…)
Sep 14, 2015 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
There’s even a company called Translational Software providing a service to incorporate enriched information about such tests into the reports that labs deliver to doctors
Personalized medicine is the good news story in healthcare and clinical laboratory medicine today. Armed with new understanding about the human genome, physicians are able to customize therapies for patients that will produce the best outcomes while avoiding or minimizing the negative side effects associated with many common prescription drugs.
This is why pharmacogenomics testing is a booming segment of the clinical laboratory industry. On its website, the Duke Center for Personalized and Precision Medicine describes this emerging lab medicine specialty as follows: “Pharmacogenomic tests are used to inform dosing and predict efficacy and adverse events for therapeutic agents. Most tests involve genetic testing, and in the case of cancer, both the DNA of the host and the tumor can be used to inform the choices for treatment.” (more…)
Mar 30, 2015 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
Innovative clinical laboratories are not only rethinking traditional LIS-to-EHR interfaces with their client physicians, but they are also helping to streamline physicians’ workflow
Most clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups would welcome a fast (“easy-on”), cheap, and effective method that enables electronic lab test ordering and lab test reporting between physician’s offices and medical laboratories.
The goal is to create the seamless interface between the electronic health record (EHR) systems of office-based physicians and the laboratory information systems (LIS) of clinical laboratories. Labs want a way to electronically receive lab test orders from physicians in a format that is easily digested by the lab’s LIS, and perhaps their hospital’s information system (HIS), and which also allows the lab to match the orders accurately and seamlessly with specimens as they arrive.
Next, the clinical lab needs an equally seamless way to electronically transmit the medical laboratory test results back to physicians so that this lab test data automatically and accurately populates the physicians’ EHRs. (more…)
Feb 18, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Evidence is emerging that medical laboratories using the ‘daily management’ approach can outperform other labs, even those using Lean methods
Clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups are information-rich environments. Yet, there is irony in the fact that—in response to financial pressures and incentives to improve the quality of medical laboratory testing services—most of the nation’s clinical labs cannot tap that rich vein of information to support performance improvement goals.
Those financial pressures have shrunk lab budgets and caused price cuts to medical laboratory test prices. These two factors are behind the trend of clinical labs and pathology groups buying middleware solutions that produce real-time data feeds on all aspects of lab operations, from phlebotomy and specimen transport, to accessioning, testing, reporting, client services monitoring, and billing/collections. (more…)
