Chris Scanlan, how are you seeing this financing drama play out in your system?
Christopher Scanlan, director of laboratory administration, BayCare Health System, Clearwater, Fla.: The population growth in our region has fueled much of our growth. We’re adding another hospital and other ambulatory sites in the next couple of years. The great part about the growth plan is that our organization values the laboratory. Lab is at the table when these conversations and developments are taking place to make sure there’s a laboratory service center on the campuses for patients in the community. Establishing a laboratory presence on these campuses ensures continuity of diagnostic services as the community grows and care delivery evolves. It affirms the laboratory’s role as a strategic asset—enabling access, supporting clinical decision-making, and advancing our system’s long-term growth and mission.
Sterling Bennett, what are your thoughts about the immediate and more distant future?
Sterling Bennett, MD, MS, senior medical director, pathology and laboratory medicine, Intermountain Healthcare: People have expressed well the challenges we have now and looking forward, but there are substantial opportunities. We recognize better than we ever have as a laboratory community how important it is to be connected with the senior leaders of our organizations. The laboratory services that are best connected with their senior leaders will be the most prosperous into the foreseeable future.
Can you flourish if you’re a freestanding lab provider not connected to anyone except your lab work?
Dr. Bennett (Intermountain): A freestanding laboratory that is closely tied with a health care organization could theoretically prosper, but the connection needs to be strong and secure. Organization leaders need to understand the value that a laboratory service line brings to them. On the one hand, laboratories are responsible for only three or four percent of total health care costs, so it would be easy for health system leaders to think they have bigger fish to fry than worrying about a lab and may lean toward outsourcing it. But the impact laboratories have on total delivery and cost of care is significantly greater than the financial impact. If we don’t help our leaders understand that, we’re enabling them to make bad decisions.
Adam Loftesness, tell us about Sanford and what your thoughts are on these issues.
Adam Loftesness, MLS(ASCP), director, laboratory support services, Sanford Health, Sioux Falls, SD: We have incredible expansion going on right now. Joining with Marshfield Clinic Health System was the big one last year, but we’ve also accumulated several independent practices in the Black Hills and Rapid City areas, and in Watertown the Prairie Lakes Healthcare System is joining with the Sanford shingle.
We are trying to grow our lab outreach business while also internalizing many of the state’s health providers. We’re also building a $300 million hospital in Rapid City. Our outreach business is still strong, but we’re trying to keep pace with the rest of the health system while monitoring and working to understand all the other things we’ve been discussing about government spending. I feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose right now with all the requests I have for trying to expand and build and do as much as possible with as little as possible.