This year will bring a host of regulatory, coding, billing, and payment changes that are going to challenge pathologists and laboratory administrators to move quickly or else face declining revenue and the grim specter of Medicare recovery audits. That was the somber consensus of three experts gathered for a December webinar hosted by The Dark Report.

“It will be a high-stakes game in 2015 because both government and private payers are stacking the deck against clinical labs and pathology groups,” Dark Report editor-in-chief Robert L. Michel said in a statement publicizing the webinar. “Across the nation, Medicare carriers and private health insurers are implementing myriad changes in coverage guidelines and reimbursement for both clinical lab tests and anatomic pathology services, in an effort to reduce their costs.”

The lede to my latest feature article in CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.