AACC provides open forum to strategize the lab’s role in value-based care
August 07, 2017
By Diana Trinh, MLS(ASCP)CM
Clinical Analyst, MD Buyline
Scientists, professors, laboratory professionals, and vendors from a wide array of diagnostic specialties gathered last week at the 69th American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in San Diego this week.
They presented topics relating to ways of tackling current issues and showcasing innovations in laboratory automation, data analytics, and diagnostics. Diana Trinh and Dennis Matricardi, clinical analysts from MD Buyline, filed reports exclusively to HealthCare Business News from the meetings and expo.
A recurring theme among the educational and vendor sessions at this year’s AACC has been how to transform health care from the fee-per-service to the value-based ideology. Its goal is not to revolutionize health care, but to bring the health care business back to its Hippocratic foundational roots by placing the patient’s health first, above all else.
The idea is to bring down costs while improving quality by shifting patient management from a reactive to a proactive approach, and to charge a bundled fee based on patient outcome rather than separate charges for each diagnostic test and treatment service. The stress will be on preventative care and elimination of inefficient or ineffective protocols and wastage. One result, it is believed, will be reduced readmission rates by utilizing innovations in personalized medicine and assessing aftercare compliance.
In theory, this transformation will provide a structure for a more standardized, holistic, and cooperative approach among the different health care disciplines and facilities. Because of the invaluable diagnostic data laboratories provide to determine the course of treatment, the AACC presented several topics on antibiotic stewardship, laboratory outreach, and standardization.
Antibiotic Stewardship
Antibiotic resistance has increasingly become a major problem. News stories of superbugs that are becoming resistant to our last line of defensive antibiotics are now all too common. The rate of antibiotic development cannot keep up. The growth of resistance has been caused by antibiotic overutilization. For example, antibiotics are often prescribed for acute bronchitis, but a majority of cases are due to viral infections for which antibiotics are useless. So how do we change the traditional method of prescribing antibiotics?
Antibiotic stewardship programs call for a collaboration between vendors, laboratories, pharmacies, and physicians to assess current protocols and come up with solutions. Traditionally, presentations of fever and high white cell counts lead to an antibiotic prescription that is further refined once organism identification and susceptibility results are obtained two to five days later. Vendors like BioMerieux, BD, and Cepheid presented their solution to the traditional culture methods by developing rapid molecular diagnostic testing for organism identification. By identifying the organism’s DNA within hours of presentation, correct antibiotic selection can be made from the start. Studies have shown this stewardship program has led to reductions in antibiotic therapy, mortality, readmissions, and adverse drug events.
Laboratory Outreach
In a value-based system, how can laboratories participate to empower patients toward preventative care and aftercare compliance? It has to be easy and convenient. The AACC provided a glimpse of plans to bring laboratory-patient interaction to the forefront.
· Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp both announced plans to place patient service centers in grocery stores and retail pharmacies. Testing will not be done there, but the move provides convenient access to get blood drawn while a patient shops.
· Several vendors like Instrumentation Laboratories, Siemens, and Roche have made investments to create a portfolio of point-of-care products in the critical care setting.
· Ushering science fiction into science reality, Qualcomm launched a five-year, $10 million challenge to the world to produce a prototype Star Trek Tricorder that has the ability to diagnose 13 health conditions and five real-time vital signs without the need for a health care worker to operate the device. AACC invited the U.S. winners, Final Frontier Medical Devices, to present its DxtER device. DxtER exceeded the competition requirements and has the capabilities to diagnose 34 diseases, from urinary tract infections to diabetes to pneumonia, in a five-pound package. At the AACC, DxtER was showcased for the first time to clinical researchers to provide insight and possibilities of becoming the first, true at-home mobile health device.
Standardization
Integrated delivery networks are a rapidly growing trend for hospitals. Along with that and efforts to grow the laboratory’s outreach, comes a growing need for standardization. Improvements in the communication between the instruments, departments, and facilities is vital in a value-based care system.
The aim for many of the vendors is how to create reproducibility of laboratory results in a system with no dependency on the instrument line model. Same reagent/consumables across vendor models and standardized graphical user interfaces were the hot sales pitches for many of the instrument vendors. Same reagents provide the confidence that the smaller facilities will produce the same results as the main core facility. Standardized graphical user interfaces ensure that the look across instrument lines won’t require major additional training.
The 69th Annual AACC produced a record-breaking 21,300 attendees and 789 exhibitors, covering 246,000 square feet. It brought together a consortium of laboratory professionals, health care leaders, physicians, and vendors to learn and teach one another not only to create standardized solutions, but to challenge and innovate in preparation for the future that may lie ahead.
About the Author: Diana Trinh joined MD Buyline in April 2017 as a clinical analyst specializing in laboratory and pharmacy. She brought more than eight years of experience in medical laboratory science in several multi-disciplines, including microbiology, bone marrow biopsies, special coagulation, and flow cytometry at Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas. In addition, she served as a histocompatibility technologist in the ASHI-accredited Immunogenomics and Transplantation laboratory at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, North Texas’s largest transplant center. She also brings with her research laboratory experience in molecular and structural biology from UT Health San Antonio.
Trinh received her Bachelor of Science degree in Clinical Laboratory Science from UT Health San Antonio, and previously studied biology at Trinity University and at UT in San Antonio. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Pathology and obtained herMLS(ASCP)CM certification in 2009.
Clinical Analyst, MD Buyline
Scientists, professors, laboratory professionals, and vendors from a wide array of diagnostic specialties gathered last week at the 69th American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in San Diego this week.
They presented topics relating to ways of tackling current issues and showcasing innovations in laboratory automation, data analytics, and diagnostics. Diana Trinh and Dennis Matricardi, clinical analysts from MD Buyline, filed reports exclusively to HealthCare Business News from the meetings and expo.
A recurring theme among the educational and vendor sessions at this year’s AACC has been how to transform health care from the fee-per-service to the value-based ideology. Its goal is not to revolutionize health care, but to bring the health care business back to its Hippocratic foundational roots by placing the patient’s health first, above all else.
The idea is to bring down costs while improving quality by shifting patient management from a reactive to a proactive approach, and to charge a bundled fee based on patient outcome rather than separate charges for each diagnostic test and treatment service. The stress will be on preventative care and elimination of inefficient or ineffective protocols and wastage. One result, it is believed, will be reduced readmission rates by utilizing innovations in personalized medicine and assessing aftercare compliance.
In theory, this transformation will provide a structure for a more standardized, holistic, and cooperative approach among the different health care disciplines and facilities. Because of the invaluable diagnostic data laboratories provide to determine the course of treatment, the AACC presented several topics on antibiotic stewardship, laboratory outreach, and standardization.
Antibiotic Stewardship
Antibiotic resistance has increasingly become a major problem. News stories of superbugs that are becoming resistant to our last line of defensive antibiotics are now all too common. The rate of antibiotic development cannot keep up. The growth of resistance has been caused by antibiotic overutilization. For example, antibiotics are often prescribed for acute bronchitis, but a majority of cases are due to viral infections for which antibiotics are useless. So how do we change the traditional method of prescribing antibiotics?
Antibiotic stewardship programs call for a collaboration between vendors, laboratories, pharmacies, and physicians to assess current protocols and come up with solutions. Traditionally, presentations of fever and high white cell counts lead to an antibiotic prescription that is further refined once organism identification and susceptibility results are obtained two to five days later. Vendors like BioMerieux, BD, and Cepheid presented their solution to the traditional culture methods by developing rapid molecular diagnostic testing for organism identification. By identifying the organism’s DNA within hours of presentation, correct antibiotic selection can be made from the start. Studies have shown this stewardship program has led to reductions in antibiotic therapy, mortality, readmissions, and adverse drug events.
Laboratory Outreach
In a value-based system, how can laboratories participate to empower patients toward preventative care and aftercare compliance? It has to be easy and convenient. The AACC provided a glimpse of plans to bring laboratory-patient interaction to the forefront.
· Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp both announced plans to place patient service centers in grocery stores and retail pharmacies. Testing will not be done there, but the move provides convenient access to get blood drawn while a patient shops.
· Several vendors like Instrumentation Laboratories, Siemens, and Roche have made investments to create a portfolio of point-of-care products in the critical care setting.
· Ushering science fiction into science reality, Qualcomm launched a five-year, $10 million challenge to the world to produce a prototype Star Trek Tricorder that has the ability to diagnose 13 health conditions and five real-time vital signs without the need for a health care worker to operate the device. AACC invited the U.S. winners, Final Frontier Medical Devices, to present its DxtER device. DxtER exceeded the competition requirements and has the capabilities to diagnose 34 diseases, from urinary tract infections to diabetes to pneumonia, in a five-pound package. At the AACC, DxtER was showcased for the first time to clinical researchers to provide insight and possibilities of becoming the first, true at-home mobile health device.
Standardization
Integrated delivery networks are a rapidly growing trend for hospitals. Along with that and efforts to grow the laboratory’s outreach, comes a growing need for standardization. Improvements in the communication between the instruments, departments, and facilities is vital in a value-based care system.
The aim for many of the vendors is how to create reproducibility of laboratory results in a system with no dependency on the instrument line model. Same reagent/consumables across vendor models and standardized graphical user interfaces were the hot sales pitches for many of the instrument vendors. Same reagents provide the confidence that the smaller facilities will produce the same results as the main core facility. Standardized graphical user interfaces ensure that the look across instrument lines won’t require major additional training.
The 69th Annual AACC produced a record-breaking 21,300 attendees and 789 exhibitors, covering 246,000 square feet. It brought together a consortium of laboratory professionals, health care leaders, physicians, and vendors to learn and teach one another not only to create standardized solutions, but to challenge and innovate in preparation for the future that may lie ahead.
Diana Trinh
Trinh received her Bachelor of Science degree in Clinical Laboratory Science from UT Health San Antonio, and previously studied biology at Trinity University and at UT in San Antonio. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Pathology and obtained herMLS(ASCP)CM certification in 2009.