CLS News Blog

The June 2010 edition of AACC’s Clinical Laboratory News has a very good article on the impact of the Healthcare Reform bill recently passed by Congress and its resultant effect on the Clinical Laboratory industry.

The American Society for Clinical Pathology Board of Registry (BOR) and the National Credentialing Agency for Laboratory Personnel (NCA) on July 21, 2009, signed an agreement forming a single certification agency for medical laboratory professionals. The agency will be called the ASCP Board of Certification (BOC). The agreement is effective on Friday, October 23, 2009.

Read more on the ASCP Website…

In the final physician fee schedule regulation published in the Federal Register on November 2, 1999, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) stated that it would implement a policy to pay only the hospital for the technical component (TC) of physician pathology services furnished to hospital patients. Prior to this proposal, any independent laboratory could bill the carrier under the physician fee schedule for the TC of physician pathology services for hospital patients. At the request of the industry, to allow independent laboratories and hospitals sufficient time to negotiate arrangements, the implementation of this rule was administratively delayed. Subsequent legislation formalized a moratorium on the implementation of the rule. As such, during this time, the carriers and, more recently, Medicare Administrative Contractors (MAC) have continued to pay for the TC of physician pathology services when an independent laboratory furnishes this service to an inpatient or outpatient of a covered hospital.

The most recent extension of the moratorium was established by the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act (MMSEA). Section 104 of the MMSEA expired on June 30, 2008, thus ending the moratorium. Therefore, independent laboratories may no longer bill Medicare for the TC of physician pathology services furnished to patients of a covered hospital, regardless of the beneficiary’s hospitalization status (inpatient or outpatient) on the date that the service was performed. This prohibition is effective for claims with dates of service on and after July 1, 2008.

Lab Tests Online has announced that it was among this year’s recipients of the 2008 Communicators Awards, which were announced earlier this spring by the International Academy of the Visual Arts.

Lab Tests Online is a noncommercial, peer-reviewed patient resource on medical laboratory testing developed by the laboratory community and produced by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.

The online press release can be found here.

The Joint Commission has published a 2009 update to their National Patient Safety Goals.

“The Goals include improvements emanating from the Standards Improvement Initiative, including the new numbering system and minor language changes for consistency. The new numbering format was designed to enable sorting electronically (for the new E-ditions of the manuals) and to accommodate the addition of new requirements. Under the new numbering system, each requirement is assigned a six-digit number that designates its place in the chapter.”

In May 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a comprehensive report on the status of laboratory medicine. CDC commissioned the Lewin Group, under subcontract to Battelle Memorial Institute to draft “Laboratory Medicine: A National Status Report,” in order to “lay the groundwork for transforming laboratory medicine over the next decade.”

The published report, entitled “Laboratory Medicine: A National Status Report”, is available on the CDC website.