Cost and Healthcare Reform: A Silver Lining?
The annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC), held in Chicago last week, is arguably the biggest annual gathering of laboratory diagnostics practitioners and vendors. As I attended the symposia and various presentations at exhibit booths, I couldn’t help but notice the focus on quality and, even more so, the cost of patient care and how laboratory diagnostics can help drive costs down. In particular, cost savings enabled by automation and information technology was a much-repeated theme as laboratory managers from hospitals reeled off statistics about how they are able to get better results to doctors faster and with fewer personnel. What is interesting is that there seems little resistance to this labor reduction, and managers can talk about attrition with little concern about people losing their jobs. The reason: a continuing shortage of qualified laboratory personnel.
The fact that laboratory medicine is able to drive labor costs down (and improve quality and service) is of course a direct result of technological advancements. Just as important is the fact that this industry does not have to contend with the consequences of job losses faced by the manufacturing sector—the auto industry being a prime example—where gains in productivity are often seen as a threat to livelihood. On the other hand, I cannot help but wonder about the reason for the lack of trained personnel. Surely, lack of incentive must be one, and I am reminded, once again, that laboratory medicine is surely one of the most undervalued components of healthcare, and that when it comes to healthcare costs, laboratory medicine gets a disproportionate amount of scrutiny as compared to imaging or therapeutics.
Perhaps this is an opportunity for an industry-academic collaboration, where IVD companies can team up with their customers in the medical centers to quantify the value of clinical diagnostics in healthcare.