PAML launches new Outreach Advantage breakthrough

Source: Healthcare Exec

Date :26/03/2008 01:31:11

PAML to release multi-million dollar technology breakthrough, Outreach Advantage,‘OA’ to the clinical laboratory industry, OA CIO Mark Johnston explains how its success will help the poor and vulnerable.

Written by Emmet Cole and produced by Nick Ledue

Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML) is set to release a set of proprietary technologies aimed at the clinical laboratory industry, with the dual aims of fueling efficiency and progress in the healthcare sector, and financing the system for those that need it most. PAML’s not-for-profit parent company, Providence Health & Services is helping to fund the new division with the goal of developing alternative revenue streams to help support their community based ministries.

“Our health system serves the poor and vulnerable,” OA CIO Mark Johnston says. “We’re trying to preserve the strength of organizations within the communities we serve. We can’t rely on the old reimbursement stream being there, because we don’t turn people away that don’t have insurance. We take care of them.”

Big thinking in a big industry

The clinical laboratory industry is worth $50 billion each year, split almost evenly between commercial and hospital-based labs. In the commercial sector, two massive companies - Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America - form a practical duopoly, leaving a smaller market share for fragmented regional labs. In this context, PAML’s unique success - $200 million in enterprise revenues each year, up from $35 million just ten years ago - is remarkable and can be attributed to its ability to form partnerships with community hospitals that tend to underutilize their own laboratories.

“It’s difficult to get different hospital systems to collaborate within a given market when they’re often competing for patient volumes,” Johnston says. “They typically don’t have deep expertise and domain understanding around outreach lab operations…

March 26, 2008

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