Roche Diagnostics Shows Keen Interest in Diagnostic Management Teams

I was slightly taken aback by a recent email blast I received fromRoche Diagnostics with links to a current and planned complementary articles about Diagnostic Management Teams (DMTs) (see:DMT series). I have posted a number of blog notes in the past about DMTs (see, for example:First Diagnostic Management Team Conference Scheduled for Next February;Deploying a DMT at the Front-End of Lab Orders for a Complex Patient). The concept of the DMT was pioneered by Dr. Mike Laposata in 1984 as a means to assist clinicians in the ordering and interpretation of coagulation tests about which he was a national expert. In the intervening years, DMTs have gained increasing support as a means to avoid diagnostic errors, decrease the length of hospital stay, decrease the cost of care, and as a tool in support of value-based care.You might then ask why I was surprised by a broad endorsement of DMTs by a large in-vitro diagnostics company like Roche. This requires reference to some historical issues in clinical pathology. I started my career as a blood banker who was keenly interested in blood utilization. I published an article in 1976 about the maximum surgical blood order schedule (MSBOS) whereby a predetermined number of units of blood were crossmatched for a particular operation. The goal was to reduce blood outdating. I posted a blog note about this topic ten years ago (see:Hospitals Seek to Limit Blood Transfusions as a Cost-Saving Measure). In those days, blood reage...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Blood banking Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Cost of Healthcare Genomic Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs