Laboratory test results guide 70% of medical decisions today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it’s not just statistics like these that underscore a laboratory’s important role in the healthcare continuum: The right laboratory partnership can improve patient care and experience, contribute to operational efficiency and reduce costs.
Following are examples of how optimized laboratory partnerships can bring value to health systems.
They’re a pathway to efficiency. These days, healthcare organizations are squeezing as much productivity as they can from wherever they can. An effective laboratory stewardship program can increase efficiencies while reducing costs.
“In the lab industry, there is both underutilization and overutilization of tests,” says Enrique Terrazas, MD, senior medical director of medical quality, Quest Diagnostics, West Hills, Calif. “Underutilization of tests can lead to incorrect diagnostic pathways, and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen. We partner with physicians to reduce underutilization and create optimal treatment and therapy plans for patients.” Oncology, with multiple clinicians often contributing to a patient’s care, is a good example of a service line that can benefit from more efficient use of lab tests to help improve care pathways, according to Terrazas.
Reducing overutilization of blood draws is another way health systems can become more efficient. Working with a laboratory partner that can communicate clinical information across the continuum means fewer blood draws needed when a patient has different entryways into the care system. This not only reduces costs but also improves the patient experience.
“When a health system and laboratory organization work cohesively, the ability to deliver high-quality care is enhanced,” says Damian P. Alagia III, MD, chief of hospital and health systems and senior medical director of women’s health, Quest Diagnostics, Secaucus, N.J. “Now, the patient only has labs drawn once, and they are available across the care continuum, not just in one facility.”
By working with a single laboratory partner that has a wide breadth of testing options, including advanced diagnostics, health system leaders can be assured that tests are no longer submitted to multiple laboratories, further enhancing efficiency—and reducing complexity. “The more laboratories that a health system has to send tests out to, the more processes the organization has to have in place for each of those laboratories,” Terrazas says. “We have the infrastructure in place so we can offer that ‘one-stop shopping’ for our partners.”
In addition to improved patient care and patient experience, more efficient use of laboratory medicine has a positive financial ripple effect. “Once you can optimize healthcare delivery, then you go a long way toward reducing costs and keeping costs down,” Terrazas says.
They’re a strategic partner in population health. Data from the laboratory can offer valuable insights into healthcare provider organizations’ patient populations. By reviewing anonymous, aggregated testing data from the lab, a health system can better understand the clinical characteristics of its patient population, which can help leaders plan more strategically.
“Every day, a laboratory collects massive amounts of data,” Alagia says. “Quest can anonymize those data and generate insights, highlighting trends that might not be apparent in a small data set.”
Insight into health trends can help leaders better understand which service lines the health system might need to create or strengthen and what types of clinicians it might need to recruit, according to Alagia. “This wealth of data helps the health system best meet the needs of its population to provide them the highest quality of healthcare going forward,” he says.
They provide invaluable intellectual capital. An optimized laboratory partnership holds another key benefit for health systems: expertise. When health systems partner with Quest, they have at their fingertips a “universe of over 600 MDs and PhDs” who are available to support clinicians, Alagia says.
“If anyone has questions about laboratory testing or results, we have subject matter experts readily available to address their questions, help them provide better care for their patients and elevate the care they deliver,” Terrazas adds.
They help keep patients at the center. Most clinical interactions include lab testing. But laboratory medicine is about more than just test results, say Alagia and Terrazas.
“It’s about patients’ well-being,” Alagia says. “Patient care is the North Star of what we do.”
Adds Terrazas, “In laboratory medicine, we are constantly asking, ‘What can we do to improve that patient-care experience? What can we do to improve the quality of the tests we deliver? What can we do to improve our turnaround time so physicians have the information they need to make the appropriate patient care decision?’ And always—always—the patient is at the center.”
For more information, please contact Damian P. Alagia III, MD, chief of hospital and health systems and senior medical director of women’s health, Quest Diagnostics, at Damian.P.Alagia@questdiagnostics.com.