Incentivizing preventive practices is exactly the principle behind Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and other initiatives forging a new healthcare delivery landscape in the US. But what exactly is an ACO? CMS defines ACOs as a group of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, coming together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to Medicare…
DetailsNowadays, ensuring that your staff is adequately educated involves so much more than it did a few years ago. Everything is changing so quickly that it is no longer enough just to hire staff that have the desired degrees and technical training; now that’s a good start, but more than ever, one must guard against…
DetailsA few weeks ago we talked about CMS’ new alternative quality control option also known as IQCP and how this new pathway will be implemented to phase out the current Equivalent Quality Control (EQC) policy. (See Risky Business published May 21st, 2013). As you probably recall, IQCP stands for individualized Quality Control plan and one…
DetailsWhile many of us have had the good fortune to work in modern laboratory settings, with adequate work space, newer instrumentation, lots of storage room, and computerized information systems, a significant number of our laboratories are not “there”. It is axiomatic that a safe workplace environment, coupled with adequate resources, and space for efficient workflow,…
DetailsThe advent and implementation of mass spectrometry for routine analysis in the clinical laboratory has revolutionized testing in specialties such as toxicology, endocrinology, microbiology, genetics, etc. This methodology offers many unparalleled advantages including a more targeted testing approach, higher sensitivity and specificity, faster turnaround time, multi-analyte testing capabilities and more. In particular, in the pain…
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