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exovadiagnostics · 2 years
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The Clinical Laboratory's Potential and Underestimated Worth
Given that healthcare finance leaders are accountable for determining the revenue potential of the clinical service lines provided by their businesses, they ought to concentrate on laboratory medicine.
Today, clinical laboratory services are a prospective source of income for hospitals and healthcare organizations. But to effectively tap into that income potential, these organizations' finance management needs to be aware of the laboratory service line's potential to enhance population health and take the initiative in educating customers about the prospects it offers.
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Contrasting the public's image of laboratory services
You can find numerous scenarios requiring laboratory testing on any medical TV show, from the routine (a family visiting a patient in a hospital bed) to the extraordinary (a response to a trauma event). In such instances, the doctor would frequently say to the patient, "We're sending labs for ABC; that will tell us if you have XYZ," or something similar.
But in reality, it involves more than just the doctor requesting a test. To carry out the duties of the laboratory, pathologists and laboratory technologists must be licensed and certified, and clinical laboratories must be accredited.
However, over the past few years, lab testing has developed into one of healthcare's most consumer-focused and readily available aspects. This development has intensified in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it's crucial that financial leaders take the initiative to maximize this service line's possibilities.
Analyzing the lab service line's expenses and profitability
The cost and revenue center relationship related to laboratory medicine is a significant problem for any healthcare organization, as it is with every service line. However, it is a simple fact that laboratory medicine can be pretty profitable.
Consider the fact that direct-to-consumer lab testing strategies are ubiquitous in drug stores. A test may check for drug usage, pregnancy, and other conditions.
So, how can finance leaders negotiate the laboratory system's terrain to maximize revenue while delivering the best possible patient care? Here are a few ideas.
Integrate lab services with the patient population at the hospital. For instance, if a hospital offers a molecular diagnostic testing service of excellence for cardiac care, It might gain from combining cardiac testing with clinical treatment to develop a "diagnosis and testing" strategy that aims to increase productivity and make the most of available resources. Depending on the revenue pro forma and ROI analysis, this strategy might be implemented by integrating specific testing tools inside the clinical service or outsourcing to commercial laboratories.
Make the most of your payers' collective bargaining and payment options. For instance, a center for inflammatory bowel disease can influence better payment for lab tests by demonstrating how clinical diagnostic and laboratory testing can encourage decreased length of stay and other disease-related expenditures as well as improved quality-of-life outcomes.
Think of direct-to-consumer products. Patients and customers can employ specific tests with a financial payment to improve their health, fee-for-service methodology. For example, a patient curious about whether they have antibodies following a COVID-19 vaccination would be ready to pay for this information out of pocket. In addition, unlike high-complexity tests like the COVID-19 RT-PCR test (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction), which the FDA recently approved for emergency use, such test options are not subject to the same state or federal reporting requirements. 
Lost warrior?
Laboratory testing is a common, effective, and affordable component of healthcare. Unfortunately, drive-through appendectomy procedures are unavailable, although COVID-19 testing is available practically anywhere. Therefore, laboratory testing has the potential to be one of the healthcare system's most revenue-generating elements. f Given the state of healthcare today, The way to attract the unsung hero that all healthcare organizations yearn for may lie in maturing and optimizing innovative laboratory testing procedures.
How Salesforce Benefits Clinical Labs
Clinical laboratories frequently have silos of patient information throughout the process, as we have observed in many businesses.
Contrasting information sources cause operational inefficiencies. Additionally, these repositories hinder a lab's ability to be proactive in client relations.
Clinical labs are increasingly using Salesforce to address these operational problems and enhance provider and patient experiences. Why is this?
1. Enhanced Outreach
Patient and customer data are compartmentalized across various systems in many clinical labs, including:
EHR, HIS, billing, email marketing, and LIS are related technologies.
Spreadsheets
A CRM system must be able to be customized to meet the unique requirements of clinical laboratories. Thanks to its broad toolkit, Salesforce constantly adapts to the intricacies of particular healthcare facilities, including labs.
It is now simpler than ever to upload clinical data to Salesforce, thanks to FHIR standards. Because it can be applied in many different contexts, this standard is crucial for decreasing the number of data silos.
What was reactive client management that may become proactive client engagement with data consolidation and visibility?
2. Improved Online Marketing
Without an element of modern digital marketing, any outreach campaign is lacking.
Compared to other email marketing vendors, Salesforce provides a more robust marketing automation platform and client experience. The standard practice for outbound digital marketing was sending an identical message to all providers. It is now simpler than ever to divide a single marketing database into numerous targeted lists when Salesforce and its marketing automation product, Pardot, are used together.
3. Assistance with Mobile Phlebotomy
Adding database and workflow functionality to mobile devices in the field is simple with Salesforce.
Thanks to this expansion, phlebotomists can now update centralized patient data while visiting nursing homes, rehab facilities, and even patients' homes.
Geographic validation also ensures that mobile phlebotomists stick to the predetermined schedule of visits.
4. More Prompt Customer Support
CRM is a platform frequently used to provide patients and clients with customer service. That feature is available in Salesforce Service Cloud.
Integrating Salesforce with call center communication software, such as Amazon Connect, can be advantageous for contact centers.
5. Real-Time Analytics
Salesforce's built-in reporting and dashboard functionality can offer a complete picture of clients when data from several silos (clinical, business, billing, and testing) are combined.
Salesforce can allow broad analytical views since it can centralize data from several internal sources.
6. Better Compliance with Lab Requests by Patients
Lacking revenue due to non-compliance with lab requests is a problem that labs frequently face. Salesforce may help with this problem.
Salesforce can address this problem by storing data from the lab and the patient's office visit (a test was requested on a specific date) (and the test results were sent to the provider on a particular date). In addition, Salesforce's exception reporting and automated alerts could let the doctor and patient know that the test didn't take place when it should have.
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