When it comes to operating a streamlined laboratory, collaborative relationships play a vital role in delivering safe, quality and cost-efficient care. These partnerships can allow labs to do more with more.
Strategic partnerships can offset some of the pressures healthcare organizations face today, including financial challenges and workforce shortages, says Michael Lukas, senior vice president, Health Systems, Quest Diagnostics, Secaucus, N.J. They can also expand organizations’ access to new and evolving technologies and drive and accelerate standardization, he adds.
As organizations look to form collaborative relationships to enhance and evolve their labs, following are several qualities to keep in mind.
Find a “Partner,” Not a “Vendor”
A great lab partner listens to the organization’s needs and understands its vision for the laboratory program.
“A partner works to solve your challenges and meets you where you’re at,” Lukas says. “The customer dictates the areas that they want to work on and in what order they want to work on them. This is where your partner should really listen to you. Ultimately, it’s your lab, your hospital, and you know more about the local environment than we do, so having your partner meet you where you are is critical.”
A strategic lab partner should also be flexible to a changing marketplace. One way to ensure this is through a shared governance model. Such a model, in which dedicated teams and committees work together to execute agreed-upon concepts, actions and priorities, allows Quest to maintain close alignment and collaboration with its health system partners and to quickly address emerging concerns.
Committees comprise stakeholders from both the health system and Quest and cover areas such as supply chain, finance, technology and physician relations. The health system maintains control throughout the governance process with guidance and execution support from Quest. All committees meet regularly.
“Having a governance model in place that facilitates change easily is incredibly important because we all know things are going to change,” Lukas says. “During the pandemic, for example, each of our strategic lab partnerships required uniquely different responses. Our deployment of flexible models to address each scenario was crucial to success.”
Seek a Partner That Aligns on Mission
All healthcare organizations have a mission, and a good strategic lab partner should be aligned with it.
When Quest Diagnostics reviews an organization’s lab, whether helping it define its strategy, perform network optimization, grow its outreach business or reduce its costs, Quest supports that organization’s mission, says Lukas.
For instance, Quest recently partnered with New Jersey-based St. Joseph’s Health, and keeping the organization’s mission of taking care of the underserved in the Paterson, N.J., community front and center was essential.
“What they do in that community is really important,” Lukas says. “There should be no compromise on the service their patients can expect. Therefore, every element that we incorporated to help St. Joseph’s provide word-class care while remaining profitable had to support that mission.”
Factors Lukas and his team considered while tailoring laboratory solutions to meet St. Joseph’s needs included driving down costs, improving lab service across the health system, bringing in new technology capabilities and improving overall care. Never asking the health system to compromise on its mission has been a hallmark of the relationship.
“From the beginning, we felt confident that Quest shared our dedication to outstanding service,” says Lisa Brady, senior vice president/interim COO, St. Joseph’s Health. “That commitment to excellence provides our patients with the same efficient and accurate testing they rely on.”
“It’s about making sure we’re creating an environment where we’re facilitating their mission and delivering solutions in a way that the health system is going to spend less money without compromising on the service their patients should expect,” Lukas says.
Make Sure the Partnership Brings Value
When St. Joseph’s partnered with Quest Diagnostics, “It had a great laboratory,” Lukas says. But the health system needed a partner to get even more value out of its lab services—and to help it reduce lab costs, increase efficiencies and fill staffing gaps.
Lukas and his team approached these concerns on multiple fronts. One key to creating more value was an emphasis on lab stewardship—making sure the care team was offering “the right test to the right patient at the right moment in time,” Lukas says.
Quest Diagnostics deployed its Lab Stewardship solutions, which use real-time lab data to assess lab test utilization. The insights gleaned are used to improve test use, driving evidence-based care, which helps reduce costs.
A strategic lab partner looks for opportunities to increase efficiencies, which includes focusing on care standardization and reducing over- and under-utilization of lab tests to better serve patients, according to Lukas.
“Organizations should consider questions such as, ‘Should a test have been ordered based on these circumstances to potentially diagnose the patient faster and begin to treat them more quickly?’” he says. “Knowing this has positive benefits such as patients having their issues addressed sooner or experiencing shorter lengths of stay.”
Finally, in addition to bringing technology capabilities and tools, a strategic lab partner ideally should come with a lot of experience working with a variety of health systems. Lukas’ team is continuously learning from and leveraging that experience to improve others’ labs.
“We have completed numerous test stewardship engagements and high value-added projects, and we’re developing quite a playbook around how to execute this knowledge in the areas of underutilization, overutilization and care variation,” he says.
That breadth of experience pushes Quest Diagnostics to continuously seek ways to enhance healthcare organizations’ lab programs.
“We’re constantly finding ourselves stretching to find new value-enhancing ideas and solutions for our partners,” Lukas says.
For more information, please contact Michael Lukas, senior vice president, Health Systems, Quest Diagnostics, at HealthSystems@QuestDiagnostics.com.
Note From Quest Diagnostics: The term partner or partnership herein is not intended to connote the formation of a business entity that requires a specific tax ID, state filings and joint and several liability.