Pathways to Excellence URMC DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE
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WWW.PATHOLOGY.URMC.EDU
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WINTER 2019
Supporting Community Care F.F. Thompson Hospital draw sites will undergo consolidation and integration with URMC
Rural hospitals across the U.S. are increasingly aware of the pressures that threaten the viability of their clinical laboratories. Since passage of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA), which changed the way Medicare reimbursement rates are calculated, hospitals of all sizes have seen their reimbursements steadily decline. But the burden has fallen more heavily on smaller rural hospitals who struggle to stay afloat amidst the changes. For this reason, more local affiliate hospitals are sending non-
acute laboratory work to the University of Rochester Medical Center to avoid slipping into negative financial margins. “There were very drastic cuts to how we get paid for doing the work that we do,” said Melissa Allen, director of operations for Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at URMC. “By centralizing, you are ultimately sending the work to the place that has the lowest cost per test and therefore increases the margin to the system.” Over the last decade, the Medical Center has expanded its reach within Western New York, partnering with affiliate hospitals across the region. Highland Hospital became the first fully-integrated affiliate hospital nearly 15 years ago. Thompson Health and its flagship hospital located in Canandaigua, N.Y. officially became a URMC affiliate in 2012. In the years that followed, other health systems did the same; Noyes Health in Dansville, Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville, both in 2015, and St. James Hospital in Hornell in March of 2018. Starting in January of this year, F.F. Thompson Hospital (FFT) will fully integrate with UR Medicine Labs. This means all outpatient specimens from their patient service centers and work collected at their associated provider offices will be sent to URMC for testing while FFT continues to perform all on-campus, inpatient and ED testing onsite. (Continued on Page 3.)
IN THIS ISSUE From the Chair.................................................................. 2
Research News ................................................................. 5
Supporting Community Care ............................................ 3
Years of Service ................................................................ 5
In Memory........................................................................ 4
Focus on Faculty ............................................................... 6