July 2023—When Butler Health System in early 2020 installed the Beckman Coulter DxA 5000 automation line, its hospitals were among the first in the country to do so. At the same time, Butler went live with the DxH 900 hematology analyzer.
Read More »Compass on ‘consumerizing health care’ and more
June 2022—What stood out among all that was seen and heard at the Executive War College? Compass Group members who were there answer CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle’s question in their early May virtual get-together, shortly after the War College took place. Here’s what they and other lab leaders said about retail lab testing, digital pathology and artificial intelligence, and their plans for the future.
Read More »With real-time data analytics, lab drills down to step it up
October 2019—As payments to laboratories decline and labs look for costs to cut, drawing on Lean and CAP 15189 know-how is the path to stronger productivity, workflow, and quality, “and all of that is eventually going to help,” says Mike Black, MBA, MT(ASCP), DLM, laboratory assistant VP of Avera McKennan Hospital and University Health Center, Sioux Falls, SD, and Avera laboratory service line administrator.
Read More »Laboratory 2.0: teaming up against opioid use disorder
September 2019—Laboratory pharmacists are a rare breed. When Monique Dodd, PharmD, PhC, MLS(ASCP), spoke at the Executive War College this year, she joked that a third of the laboratory pharmacists in the country might be in the audience.
Read More »Up-front on PAMA impact, private payer pricing
September 2019—I’m going to talk about our experience over the past couple of years with PAMA, which seeks to produce market pricing, and some of the lessons we’ve learned. We all know how we got here and one of the questions has always been: Did we ever have market pricing? The answer is probably not. When you’re dependent on a 30-plus-year-old fee schedule that never was revised for technology revisions, there wasn’t market pricing to begin with. And at the end of all of what we’re experiencing, we still don’t quite have it.
Read More »Ups and downs of bringing in Beaker AP LIS
August 2019—Having an enterprisewide health care platform can put laboratories in a stronger decision-making position for enterprisewide IT, whereas in most other circumstances, “we are relatively isolated,” said Raj C. Dash, MD, in a talk he gave at this year’s Executive War College. Dr. Dash, vice chair of pathology IT at Duke University Medical Center, shared what he called the blessings and curses of his department’s move in 2014 to a lab information system that’s fully integrated with the electronic medical record. His focus was Beaker’s AP-LIS module.
Read More »Xifin CEO: Time to tune up negotiations with payers
September 2018—The second round of PAMA data collection is coming in 2019 and it’s critical to get it right, said Lâle White, CEO of Xifin, in a presentation in May at the Executive War College. If it’s not right, she warned, laboratories could see cuts that are more severe than those already seen.
Read More »Artificial intelligence: what’s possible, why now?
July 2018—When it comes to artificial intelligence, it can be difficult to distinguish hyperbole from reality. So how much can AI truly replace human tasks in society and, more specifically, in medicine?
Read More »Not fit to test: battling high hemolysis rates in the ED
August 2016—Poverty, unemployment, crime, dropout rates: In some categories, no community wants to be No. 1. And in some categories, no hospital wants to be No. 1 either. High on that list: hemolysis.
Read More »In C. diff and cardiac care, lab steps up decision support
July 2016—What’s the one way to win friends and influence people? If you’re Eugenio H. Zabaleta, PhD, the answer is simple: Reduce the number of stool samples nurses have to collect. A few years ago, Dr. Zabaleta, clinical chemist at OhioHealth Mans-field Hospital, introduced a clinical testing algorithm for C. difficile that cut the number of stool samples by almost 50 percent. “And the nurses are loooving me for it,” he says happily. “The joke is, when nursing and lab work together, there is literally less crap for everybody.”
Read More »RFID keeps lab’s supplies on hand, just in time
June 2015—Sharon Cox, MT(ASCP)SM, has a passion for the correct count. Charged with managing the laboratory supply inventory as core lab supervisor at Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa, Okla., she knows the right tally matters. Get it wrong and the lab can wind up with too little of what is needed. That can mean big overnight shipping charges when things run out unexpectedly. To avoid that outcome, the lab may order more supply than necessary, which leads to a different kind of problem.
Read More »Where smart labs go when the money’s gone
August 2014—Payment rates declining. Bad debt rising. Test orders falling. Diagnostic equipment manufacturers checking in on test-volume commitments. A wrenching transition from fee-for-service care to population-based medicine. These are a few of the trends that laboratories across the country are seeing and that keep lab directors up at night, heavy lidded, checking their email, illuminated by the glow of their smartphones.
Read More »For labs, opportunity knocks as wallets close
August 2013—Robert L. Michel doesn’t claim to have all the answers to all the problems laboratory medicine now faces. But as editor-in-chief of The Dark Report, the industry intelligence publication, he knows what those problems are chapter and verse. He also sees where future problems lie.
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