Trust

Hey maybe we all can get really lucky and catch on with one of these companies who likes to bill for your mileage but only compensate you at a third of the rate they collect on your behalf from Medicare and then tells you to punch "IN" and "OUT" only from the facility.

Seriously, the only thing ridiculous is the amount of work people and companies expect people to do for free when they figure that such a large percentage will never figure out that they are actually billing and collecting for your "services"?

Want improvements in patient care and results. Eliminate HR and "managers". Maybe then they can manage to take their salaries out of the equation instead of seeking to make a dime off of the employees.

Any business you get involved in, name any business. Once you start to see all kinds of analyses and management "directives" and all these silly memos going from department to department and this or that "director" or oversight mechanism etc etc... You already know you've progressed to the redundantly silly and I guarantee you the billed compensation is not primarily ending up in the pocket of the individual performing the work.

Managers are numb skulls.

Stephanie,

Thanks for the link.  These kinds of stories make me wonder if the media gets any story right.  The feigned astonishment that results differ from lab to lab was a good touch, if the story didn't worry us enough.  Maybe the reporter should tell the ad people at Cheerios.

I spoke with a patient who complained that his elevated INR (it was greater than 9) didn't match between our lab and a lab at a nearby medical center.  It was futile to try to reassure him; he simply believed the lab at the bigger hospital.  We changed our policy to report values greater than 9 as "> 9," and one of our docs complained that we didn't give him an INR like "the big labs."

This is understandable, if the docs think the bigger labs can afford better technology.  If that's the case, a smaller lab needs to market itself directly to providers, perhaps with a newsletter, to let them know quality is a priority.

I saw a very interesting story on "Good Morning America" a while ago; here's a link to the online verson on ABC News' web site:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/wireStory?id=6597882

Although not mentioned in the web article, a doctor who specializes in nutrition made a statement on the TV show about "performing his own tests" rather than sending them out to a large reference lab because "mistakes happen in much larger numbers" in large labs than in smaller ones.

The reporter also mentioned that "many laboratory tests are not approved by the FDA," suggesting that the general public should be greatly concerned about there supposedly not being any oversight of laboratory work to prevent incorrect results from leaving the lab and falling into doctors' hands.  Only blood products are considered "drugs;" isn't that why the FDA only gets involved with transfusion services in medical labs? LOL

Also, people who work in smaller labs are no less prone to making mistakes (as a result of faulty PROCESSES that could be improved to prevent errors) than those in huge facilities such as Quest Diagnostics.

Maybe this story will finally get people interested in finding out what laboratory professionals do every day to ensure accurate and precise results.  They may actually become interested in finding out that Medicare/Medicaid requires hospital labs to demonstrate their quality assurance procedures, including means of identifying and correcting causes of erroneous results, so that the labs will receive reimbursement from the government for the testing they perform.  Hopefully people will become aware of CAP and JCAHO - and why these agencies are more effective at ensuring the highest possible quality of laboratory work than "FDA approval or regulation" of every test out there would be.