Bennet Omalu, MD, MBA, MPH, who gave the spotlight event speech at CAP ’15 earlier this month, says he met retired Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster before conducting the 2002 autopsy that would lead to the first diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a National Football League player.

“I met him on TV,” Dr. Omalu says. “All the channels were talking about this great NFL player who died suddenly, and talking about him in very derogatory ways. Many NFL players, when they retire, they don’t handle their money well. They become destitute and bankrupt.”

To the Nigerian-born Dr. Omalu, fresh from completing his neuropathology fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, football players scrambling across the field in headgear “looked like extraterrestrials.”

The lead item in this month’s “Put It on the Board.” Read the whole shebang.

As hospitals are brought under single health systems, laboratory leaders are faced with the task of ensuring that their clinical lab results are comparable among various sites and instruments. But some have had more opportunity than most to investigate the mischief afforded by variations in instruments, reagents, and more.

Dina N. Greene, PhD, found herself in that position. She worked for four years at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, where she served as a clinical chemistry consultant for its 21 hospital laboratories in the area and directed hemoglobinopathy and myeloma testing for the system’s regional laboratory.

“This is an increasing kind of problem with consolidation. As different universities acquire more hospitals and as hospital systems acquire other hospitals, it’s going to be an increasing challenge,” says Dr. Greene, now associate director of chemistry at the University of Washington Medical Center. She also is assistant professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UW, which she joined in December 2014.

“You have to standardize your equipment—that’s a fundamental part of this. Without standardizing the equipment, you just have so much more opportunity for wildly different results, especially if everything is going into the same electronic medical record,” Dr. Greene says.

Another feature from the October CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.

The advantages of molecular respiratory viral panels are accompanied by a challenge for laboratories that find it difficult to secure payment for testing that can cost hundreds of dollars, depending on the number of pathogens involved.

These respiratory panels can create complications for laboratories that must juggle several platforms to meet clinician needs, spare patients from unnecessary out-of-pocket costs, and responsibly use lab resources. A newly cleared flexible respiratory testing panel could offer laboratories another approach.

My cover story in the October edition of CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.

Roche has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Los Gatos, Calif.-based GeneWeave BioSciences, a privately held company focused on molecular clinical microbiology diagnostic solutions.

The acquisition provides Roche with GeneWeave’s Smarticles technology, which quickly identifies multidrug-resistant organisms and assesses antimicrobial susceptibility directly from clinical samples without the need for traditional enrichment, culture, or sample preparation processes. GeneWeave’s first system in development is the vivoDx, a fully automated, random-access system designed to meet the needs of laboratories addressing MDRO detection and antibiotic therapy guidance. The technology, marketed as enabling a “sample in, susceptibility out” testing paradigm, is being evaluated at multiple sites across the U.S.

My latest in the “Put It on the Board” section of CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.

Two major specialties serve all of health care as the foundation for diagnosis. Now efforts to align pathology and radiology again appear to be picking up steam. As payment shifts to so-called value-based care and as medical record systems may challenge successful test interpretation, many experts seek a clear integration of these two specialties.

So begins my cover story in September edition of CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.

In a move expected to help meet accreditation standards on testing turnaround times for stroke and chest pain patients, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s emergency department will gets its own satellite laboratory this month. The 333-square-foot space—dubbed “the nest” for its small size—comes after years of struggle with the turnaround time demands for certification as a Joint Commission Comprehensive Stroke Center and accreditation as a Chest Pain Center by the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care.

My lede for this item in the “Put It on the Board” section. Read the whole shebang.

Despite the demonstrated value of implementing reflex testing algorithms to improve patient care and avert wasteful spending, the road from conceptual understanding to plan-in-action can be rocky.

A pathologist at one academic medical center recently talked about his experience with reflex testing algorithms in the areas of urine screening and preoperative anemia screening. His story illustrates the barriers to change as well as the enviable outcomes that could potentially be achieved.

My lede. Read the whole shebang.

After years of reading the latest news from the CMS with dread, pathologists and independent laboratories have some reason for revelry this summer as the agency’s proposed physician fee schedule offers an overall uptick in Medicare payment for 2016. Yet it is the final physician fee schedule, due in November, that will tell whether pathologists feel grateful toward the CMS when Thanksgiving rolls around.

My lede. Read the whole shebang.

Forces potentially disruptive to mainstream clinical laboratory practice lie ahead, Gregory J. Tsongalis, PhD, director of molecular pathology and clinical genomics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, said in a War College presentation in May.

The lede to another piece in this month’s “Put It on the Board” section. Read the whole shebang.

Amid excitement about the groundbreaking work of unlocking the human genome’s secrets to speed diagnosis and target oncologic treatment comes the unpleasant reality that much of this labor now goes unpaid. Getting the American Medical Association’s editorial panel to publish nearly two dozen new genomics-related CPT codes for molecular pathology was a vital step, as was having those codes accepted in the Medicare clinical laboratory fee schedule.

In CAP TODAY’s “Put It on the Board” section this month. Read the whole shebang.

For laboratory chief information officer David N. Moore, July marks a first anniversary worth celebrating. Twelve months ago, his employer, Phoenix-based Sonora Quest Laboratories, flipped the switch on its new laboratory information system, effectively turning it on site-wide with one click—and with barely a hitch or a glitch.

The lede to my piece in July’s “Newsbytes” section. Read the whole shebang.

Recent legal developments should give laboratories new cause to tightly monitor efforts to win physician referrals, attorney Jane Pine Wood said at last month’s Executive War College meeting.

In April, the federal government reached a settlement with cardiovascular-disease testing labs Health Diagnostic Laboratory and Singulex to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by paying doctors in exchange for patient referrals. The U.S. Justice Department also alleged the companies billed Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary testing. HDL agreed to pay $47 million to settle the matter, while Singulex will pay $1.5 million.

My latest contribution for “Put It on the Board.” Read the whole shebang.

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.

“All those reagents you have sitting in the refrigerator—that’s just wasted money sitting there that could be better used by the health system,” Cox said last month during a talk at the Executive War College in New Orleans.

My feature article in the June edition of CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.