PHYSICIAN OFFICE LAB
Making the Complex Simple for CLIA Some insights and resources to help you and your customers get more comfortable with CLIA compliance. CLIA ’88 has been in place now since 1992 and is still probably one of the most misunderstood
obstacles to a creating and managing a successful moderate complexity physician office lab. While manufacturers and distributors have deployed an increasingly impressive range of specialist sales personnel and a broad range of consultative resources to help the distributor account manager, customer concerns and reluctance continue to provide a daily struggle for all of us involved in the physician office laboratory market. In this article, I intend to review some of the laboratory license statistics and take a fresh look at the array of resources available to help you and your customers become comfortable with compliance with CLIA, and to manage an outstanding, profitable, and productive physician office laboratory.
What does the CLIA lab license data tell us? The total number of laboratory licenses has grown from about 207,000 in 2008 to 262,000 in 2018, an increase of over 26%. That’s the good news. What about the moderate and high complexity licenses? In 2008, there were 35,673 of them. In 2018,
the number dropped to 33,674, a decrease of about 6%. What are some of the reasons? There are a number of factors in play, and it’s not easy to determine which are the most influential. But, they include factors ranging from consolidation of some physician practices to physician retirements and purchase of practices by IDNs as well as shut
By Jim Poggi
downs related to PAMA reimbursement cuts and inability to keep current with CLIA regulations. While we cannot influence the more macro trends including practice consolidation and IDN practice purchases, we can assure we actively support our current customers and support new customers considering investing in a moderate complexity lab.
Managing and coaching the current customers This should always be our first priority. In last month’s column, I addressed how to prevent the current customer from making the decision to cease testing. Simply stated, you need to work with your key laboratory suppliers and stay in close touch with your customers to assess their lab quality, personnel satisfaction and technical performance. To do so successfully really requires a commitment to thoughtful and frequent business reviews, drawing out small issues before they become significant roadblocks that could endanger the future 4
June 2022
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