The " Proximity Advantage " Enjoyed by Retail, Walk-In Clinics Over Health Systems
This article caused me to reflect on what I will call the"proximity advantage" held by the rapidly expanding walk-in clinics in drug stores and Walmart. As noted above, CVS and Walgreens combined have about 20,000 stores in the U.S. which means that one of them will always be very close to the vast majority of American healthcare consumers. This proximity to consumers provides a distinct advantage over hospitals in the competition for primary care patients. In addition, these clinics are beginning to offer services to a broader range of patients. When it purchased Aetna, CVS announced that it would be...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 20, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Healthcare Insurance Hospital Financial Medical Consumerism Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
Questions Raised about the American Cancer Society's Corporate Partners
The EVP and CMO of the American Cancer Society has resigned, reportedly over the organization's corporate relationships (see:Cancer Society Executive Resigns Amid Upset Over Corporate Partnerships). In 2009, I posted a note stating that theAmerican Academy of Family Physicians had received a six-figure grant from Coca-Cola and also that theAmerican Academy of Pediatric Dentists took a $1 million payment from Coca-Cola In 2003 (see: American Academy of Family Physicians Cozies Up to Coke). Below is an excerpt from the article about the ACS:A top official of the American Cancer Society has resigne...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 15, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Medical Consumerism Medical Ethics Public Health Source Type: blogs
Reducing Healthcare Costs with Virtual Visits; Tangible Evidence Provided
I have suggested in the past notes that deploying virtual visits (telemedicine) in a health system can reduce costs but did not provide any tangible evidence to support the idea (see:Telemedicine Used in New Healthcare Settings Like Coaching). However, in a recent webinar, executives fromSpectrum Health make the point that deploying virtual visits does result in substantial savings for the health system; they also provide concrete evidence for this assertion (see:Spectrum Health Uses Site-to-Site Telehealth Consults to Avoid Transfers and Reduce Costs).Spectrum is a large health system operating in central Michigan w...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 13, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Quality of Care Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Doctor on Demand Expands Reach with Walmart Collaboration and Coupon for Care
I continue to be interested in what is happening with first-tier (i.e., primary) healthcare. It's being shaken up by retail drug store, walk-in clinics likeMinuteClinic, urgent care centers, and virtual care. With for-profit companies now deeply embedded in the mix, aggressive marketing of services is being introduced and now a coupon is being used to attract customers to virtual care. Details were provided in as recent article (see:Doctor on Demand expands through Walmart collaboration) with an excerpt below:Walmart and the parent company ofMucinex are partnering withDoctor On Demand, a virtual care provider hea...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 8, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Source Type: blogs
Registration Almost Full for the Second Annual API Digital Pathology Workshop
The second annual API Digital Pathology and AI Workshop will be presented on December 7-8. 2018 (see:Digital Pathology and AI Workshop II). The location will be Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. You can register for the workshophere. The capacity for the workshop has been doubled over last year's event, now with a maximum of 80 people.Only nine spaces remain open at this time. A waiting list will be created when these places are filled.Available on the API web site are theschedule and thesponsoring vendors to date for the workshop. Here is a list of the workshop facult...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 6, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Digital Imaging in Pathology Medical Education Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs
The Future of the LIS: Reflections about Consumers Ordering Their Own Lab Tests
Discussion about the LIS of the Future; Analytics as a Key Feature?). I have raised two major points thus far: (1) a major function of the LIS of the future will be to manage diagnostic and predictive analytics; and (2) it's not clear at this time which type of vendor (LIS, EHR, other) will dominate this new LIS landscape. I have also been referring to the LIS of the future as the LIS-A because of the emphasis on analytics.In this note, I want to emphasize that consumer preferences will be a factor in lab analytics testing. For about two decades, consumers have been allowed to order their own lab tests using the direct...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 5, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Genomic Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Regulation LIS Definitions and Strategy LIS Vendor News Source Type: blogs
Continuing Discussion about the LIS of the Future; Analytics as a Key Feature?
In a recent note, I discussed how LIS's as components of EHR's were slowly gaining favor in the market over interfaced best-of-breed LIS's (see:Predicting the Future Functions of the LIS-Analytic (LIS-A)). Bill Grolly, a reader of the blog, submitted the following comment in response:I think that the best of breed LIS's trying to find a way to move into this space is probably going to be very difficult for them.Why would the EMR vendors (Cerner, Epic), who have a built in lab system want to interface that data to a standalone LIS when they can provide the soup to nuts solution, including that analytics comp...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 2, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Food and Drug Administration Genomic Testing Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Regulation LIS Vendor News Medical Re Source Type: blogs
Health System Transfers Its Pharmacies to Walgreens; Manages Regional Retail Clinics
One interesting aspect of the emergence of retail clinics in drug stores is the business model being used by these companies for staffing these clinics with medical personnel. CVS staffs its MinuteClinics with nurse practitioners (NPs) who, incidentally, have anaverage hourly pay of $52. Staffing clinics with NPs rather than physicians obviously places limits on the type of patients who can be treated in the there. Another model, being pursued by Walgreens, is to select a regional healthcare provider to manage and staff the clinics. The details of such an arrangement were provided by a recent article (see...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 1, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Source Type: blogs
Predicting the Future Functions of the LIS-Analytic (LIS-A)
In a recent blog note, I stated that the LIS modules of EHRs such as Epic's Beaker are gaining traction in the market and thus performing the functions of the previously dominant best-of-breed LISs like Sunquest or SCC. I went on to suggest that the vendors of these latter systems should be aggressively working on a new type of LIS to protect their market share. Such a product would undoubtedly include support for lab-initiated diagnostic and predictive analytics (see:Diagnostic and Predictive Analytics and Their Possible Link to the Future of the LIS). In this and future blog notes about this topic, I will use m...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 30, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Information LIS Definitions and Strategy LIS Vendor News Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs
Rosy Future Predicted for Cannabis Research; Lab Launched to Support Clinical Trials
Cannabis is the one growth industry in the U.S. that you can count on. Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in many states. Moreover, there's increasing attention being paid to the medical uses of cannabis-based products. An Israeli lab has been set up to provide clinical validation for cannabis medical research (see:Israeli lab set up to give clinical validation to cannabis research). Below is an excerpt from an article on this topic:Israeli firm Asana Bio Group Ltd. has invested $2.3 million in a lab that will provide clinical trial services to companies that are developing a wide range of med...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 25, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Medical Research Pharmaceutical Industry Source Type: blogs
Diagnostic and Predictive Analytics and Their Possible Link to the Future of the LIS
I have posted a number of previous notes about analytics (see, for example:Lab Analytics Emerges as Hot Area for Software Development;Relevance of Lifestyle Analytics for Healthcare Organizations;Much of the Future for Pathology and Lab Medicine Rests with Analytics;Successfully Screening for Lung Cancer Based on Predictive Analytics). I believe that the future of clinical pathology, which is to say the mission of hospital-based clinical labs, will be significantly intertwined with analytics. I had begun to categorize the various types of analytics in previous posts. However,Gartner has come up with a very good schema for ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 23, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures LIS Definitions and Strategy Preventive Medicine Source Type: blogs
It's Not Too Late to Register for a Free Pathology Informatics Webinar Tomorrow
TheAssociation for Pathology Informatics (API) andSunquest Information Systems are co-sponsoring a webinar tomorrow, October 23, which is the second in a series of two focusing on pathology informatics challenges in large health systems. You can view the first webinar in this series from September 25, 2018, here. The time for tomorrow's presentation will be 1:00 p.m. ET. The speakers are Mark Tuthill, M.D., Division Head, Pathology Informatics Henry Ford Health System, and Brad Brimhall, M.D., Medical Director of Healthcare Analytics& Bioinformatics, University of Texas Health Science Center, San ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 22, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Processes and Procedures LIS Definitions and Strategy Medical Research Pathology Informatics Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
Will Publishing Drug List Prices Help to Reduce Their Cost?
One of the current Trump agenda items has been to force drug companies to advertise their list drug prices. On the face of it, this would seem to be a good idea but I don't think it's going to turn out that way for various reasons (see:Despite growing pressure, major drug companies will stop short of disclosing prices in ads). Below is an excerpt from an article on the topic:Dozens of pharmaceutical companies have pledged that their upcoming television advertisements will direct viewers to more information about how much a drug might cost, such as a page on a company website....The [pharmaceutical] trad...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 19, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Innovations Healthcare Insurance Medical Consumerism Pharmaceutical Industry Public Health Source Type: blogs
Who Will Resurrect the " Futurescape of Pathology " Conference?
Hospital-based clinical laboratories are facing threats in various forms including the changing face of ambulatory care. I described this threat in a recent blog note (see:Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care). The basic problem for pathology is that inpatient admissions are decreasing and new ways to deliver ambulatory care will siphon patients away from hospital ambulatory care settings and hospital-based testing. This is only one challenge facing pathology and the clinical labs. We are in urgent need of a pathology conference with a strategic orientation that can provide answe...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 16, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends LIS Vendor News Medical Education Source Type: blogs
