5 Key Takeaways from Executive War College

Here is a quick overview of yesterday's webinar featuring Robert Michel, Editor-in-Chief of the Dark Report. 

Robert Michel, one of healthcare's most respected thought leaders, presented his top key takeaways from his wildly popular conference, Executive War College. Here, we've outlined the main themes he covered, as well as one bonus point. You can access Robert's entire presentation, which includes actionable strategies for success, here.

5 Key Takeaways (and one bonus!)

1. New Quality Imperative
   • Transparency between doctors, laboratories, and patients
   • Rise of Lean, Six Sigma, and Process Improvement solutions
   • Real-time analytics will drive quality improvement
2. Tougher Fight For Money
   • Medicare and insurance providers are reducing test reimbursements
   • Payer audits are becoming more aggressive
   • Hospitals and health systems are cutting lab budgets
3. Ongoing cost-cutting is essential
   • Less money coming in from reimbursements, but an increase in patient volume and tests
   • Must be able to cut costs without compromising quality
   • Require informatics to support real-time analytics
4. Deliver more value with lab testing
   • Educate providers on ordering the right test at the right time
   • Deliver improved patient outcomes at lower costs
   • Increased informativs and analytics means actionable clinical intelligence for providers
5. Support for personalized and precision medicine
   • Help physicians treat patients as unique individuals
   • Combine lab science with informatics
   • Rise of infectious disease testing adn campanion diagnostics
6. Leverage real-time information, technology, and analytics
   • Break through data silos and integrate many systems for singular views of patient data
   • Only way to cut costs and increase quality while serving more patients is through technology
   • Real-time metrics and analytics promotes action, accountability, and follow-up throughout labs and health systems

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Truth for Labs

The Ugly: Fraud & Abuse

Robert unveiled some eye-opening numbers in his presentation:

• 3,172,910% increase in CLIA-waived drug tests conducted at physicians' offices and paid for by medicare (between 2000 and 2009)
• 63,687,900% increase in CLIA_waived drug tests within the specialty of anesthesiology (from 2000 to 2009)
• $2 billion is spent every year on drug testing in pain management
• Some physicians are making more money running drug tests on patients than actually treating patients

The Bad: Managed Care/FFS

The age of fee-for-service care is ending, ushering in a new fee-for-value paradigm. Much is still unknown, but here is what we can expect:

• Providers must be proactive in detecting diseases and managing chronic conditions
• Sophisticated analysis of healthcare data and metrics will inform both population health management and personalized care
• Genetic medicine is upon us and labs are positioned to lead this trend.

The Good: Healthcare is Full of Positive Trends

The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities for labs to overcome these challenges and succeed moving forward, including:

• Joining ACOs or integrated clinical organizations is a must for labs
• Big data and population health management will be informed by lab test data
• Next big things are precision & personalized medicine, which means more molecular diagnostics and genetic tests.

You can view Robert's entire presentation here.