CMS recently dropped outpatient quality measure OP-16, which required reporting cardiac troponin results within 60 minutes of arrival with chest pain, citing a recall of point of care (POC) testing devices from one manufacturer. Oh, happy day. When I circulated the CMS memo a nurse said with relief, “Thank God we don’t have to use POC ...

The US Preventive Services Task Force is recommending that healthy men should not be routinely screened with the PSA test. There has been a buzz that this decision was in the offing for several years now, so the final ruling is not a surprise to  many. The logic of course is that the test has a high degree of nonspecificity and is ...

Traditionally, laboratories result and complete testing that is either mailed, faxed, or “available“ electronically. Without paper, providers have to hunt and peck, which involves logging in, finding the patient, clicking, scrolling, and all the rest. The jargon is “pull technology” -- a request for information is initiated by a user (client). ...

A few years ago a local patient with a critical INR in our laboratory had his test repeated at a medical center in a nearby city with wildly different results. The patient telephoned us and complained. “I don’t know who is running your tests,” he said, “but they need to get their act together! I can’t drive an hour every time I need a blood ...

I wonder if Bigfoot uses Facebook at work. That’s at least as farfetched a notion that giving access to a social networking site at work destroys productivity, which according to one study is only 1.5%, less than all the time spent at “breaks.” In the same study, 77 percent of Facebook junkies access the site while at work, perhaps up to two ...

The classic 100-cell differential is a hard habit to break, but it can be done. I can still see those microscopes lined up (with the ashtrays!) at the diff table! Modern cell counters report more accurate differentials than possible by counting 100 cells on a peripheral smear, a procedure useful when estimating abnormal cells or as a backup ...

Healthcare is struggling with a transition -- arguably a transformation -- into an electronic medical record (EMR). Instead of bulging paper charts stuffed with scribbled, half-legible order sheets and progress notes, we will have indexed, clean, searchable data. Paging Dr. Geek. Paging Dr. Geek to the terminal... The concept isn’t new, first ...

It’s common for laboratories to repeat all critical values before reporting them, but that may be changing. A 2009 CAP Q-Probe examines the utility of this practice that may be obviated by modern instrumentation. An article in ASCP Lab Medicine makes the point that in the last ten years we have made leaps in accuracy, precision, clot detection, ...

Automation, such as the Siemens StreamLAB implemented recently at a Pennsylvania hospital, is almost commonplace. “The new automated laboratory equipment is capable of performing up to 125 different lab tests at the rate of 2,000 an hour and will advance the processing of chemistry testing, said Tom Flatley, administrative director of the ...

McKesson, San Francisco, and HP, Palo Alto, CA, recently announced they are collaborating to accelerate and simplify electronic health record (EHR) adoption at independent physician practices across the country. The companies will offer physicians McKesson's EHR/practice management systems bundled with HP office hardware ...