Deploying a DMT at the Front-End of Lab Orders for a Complex Patient

Dr. Mike Laposata who is Chairman of the Department of Pathology at UTMB in Galveston has been an advocate for diagnostic management teams (DMTs) and the clinical pathologist as a consultant for decades (see: The Clinical Pathologist as Consultant). He launched a conference aboutDiagnostic Management Teams (DMTs) last year that was highly successful and it will be repeated this coming February. In a recent article inCAP Today, Mike discussed the role of a DMT at the"front-end" of test orders for presumably complex patients (see:The what and why of diagnostic management teams). Here is an excerpt from that article:The concept of a diagnostic management team, or DMT, is simple.It involves a group of experts who meet daily and focus on the correct selection of laboratory tests and the interpretation of complex test results in a specific clinical field.The experts are typically pathologists focusing on the diagnosis of a specific group of diseases, but doctors and laboratory experts other than pathologists can participate effectively. The front end of the process is assistance [to the test-ordering physician] in selecting the correct tests.This often involves the creation of expert-driven algorithms that are updated regularly to manage utilization of laboratory tests and dramatically minimize overuse and underuse. Use of such algorithms with reflex testing makes it easy for treating health care providers to order the right tests and only the righ...
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