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ACLA Wins Appeals Court Decision; HHS Likely To Request Rehearing
On July 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the American Clinical Laboratory Assn. (ACLA) in its suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding implementation of the Protecting Access to Medicare...
Top 20 Medi-Cal Laboratories
The largest Medi-Cal lab provider is The Genetic Disease Screening Program (GDSP) of the California Department of Health, which received $29.5 million of Medi-Cal FFS payments in calendar year 2018, according to the latest available data from DHCS. The Genetic Disease...
Debt Collection Company Hack May Affect 20+ Million Patients
Aweb payment page operated by American Medical Collection Agency(AMCA-Elmsford, NY) has been hacked and may have exposed personal data on 20+ million patients from at least three commercial lab companies: Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp and BioReference Labs. AMCA, which...
Public Lab CEOs Paid Average $4 Million
The chief executives at 17 publicly-traded lab companies were paid an average of $4 million each last year, according to an analysis of shareholder proxy statements by Laboratory Economics. Altogether, the 17 CEOs earned a total of $6 7.6 million, including $10.7...
Latest Medi-Cal Private-Payer Payment Survey Underway
California’s Medi-Cal lab fee schedule has been pegged to private-payer rates since 2015. California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is currently in the midst of its fourth private-payer rate survey, which will be used to set Medi-Cal reimbursement rates...
LabCorp CEO Dave King To Retire
LabCorp has announced that its CEO Dave King, age 62, will be retiring, effective October 31, 2019. Starting on November 1, King will become Executive Chairman of the Board through at least the end of 2020. He will also act as senior advisor to LabCorp’s new CEO, Adam...
When Will The EKRA Ban On Commission-Based Sales Reps Be Lifted?
As part of ongoing efforts to combat the nationwide opioid crisis, Congress enacted the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (SUPPORT Act) effective October 24, 2018. As part of the SUPPORT Act, Congress enacted the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018...
What Kind Of Company Is 23andMe?
A study led by researchers at the genetic testing lab company Invitae (SanFrancisco, CA) found that 23andMe’s direct-to-consumer BRCA test forhereditary breast cancer misses almost 90% of BRCA mutation carriers. 23andMe has been criticized for offering the test...
Largest Nursing Home Lab Company Seeks Bankruptcy Reorganization
Trident Holding Company (Sparks, MD), the nation’s largest nursing home lab operator, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in the Southern District of New York on February 11. Trident, which employs 4,500 full-time workers and 660 people part time, provides...
Many Hospital Labs Still Don’t Know They Must Report PAMA Data
On January 22, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hosted a teleconference that focused on a new rule that requires nearly all hospital outreach labs to collect their private-payer payment data from January 1 to June 30, 2019, and report it to CMS...
Special New Year’s Report: Lab Execs Share Outlook for 2019
For an inside look at what may be in store for the clinical lab and pathology business this year, Laboratory Economics interviewed the top executives at a diverse group of 10 lab companies. Not surprisingly, our interviews revealed that commercial insurers are using...
Does New Far-Reaching Anti-Kickback Law Apply To All Labs?
Hastily passed opioid legislation, signed into law by President Trump on October 24, outlaws the use of volume-based compensation for laboratory sales reps, regardless of the type of testing involved. The new law, Section 8122 of the “Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery...
GAO Warns Of Increased Costs From Unbundling Panel Tests
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has zeroed in on the unbundling of common panel tests as a practice that could cause Medicare to overpay billions under PAMA’s new market-based CLFS. The potential for overpayment stems from a loophole...
UltraClinics Aims to Spread Telepathology
UltraClinics Inc. (Tucson, AZ) has begun marketing a telepathology service that will allow diagnostic imaging centers and outpatient surgery centers to offer their patients same-day anatomic pathology reports from on-site tissue biopsies, Ronald Weinstein, M.D., 67,...
Redwood Toxicology Sold For 3.3x Revenue
The investment firm American Capital Strategies (Bethesda, MD) has paid $79.5 million for a 67% stake in Redwood Toxicology Laboratory (Santa Rosa, CA). Redwood’s management team, including chief executive and founder Bob Mount, owns the remaining 33%. The deal, which...