As of July 2007, these pages are no longer being maintained. There is a smaller selection of links on our new web pages, under the links menu at the far right side.

Billing | E-Ventures | Evolving Technologies | Getting a Web Site |
Issues | The Laboratory Industry | Quality Assurance

Billing and Related Information

See CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (formerly HCFA) for information on Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). All physicians need to be sensitive to issues of Medicare fraud and abuse, because financial penalties are significant. HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) has added important new rules, particularly regarding privacy of patient information. Information specific to clinical laboratories is grouped under the Clinical Labs Center.

HDM Week is an e-mail newsletter available free of charge from Health Data Management magazine. Many articles concern payment and insurance issues.

Searchable ICD-9 code list. Also browseable ICD-9 lists, and a browseable medical dictionary.

SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine). Core medical terminology initially developed and continually supported by the College of American Pathologists.

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Commercial Labs/E-Ventures

The American Association for Clinical Chemistry recently joined with several other organizations and sponsors to launch a consumer site, Lab Tests Online, a public resource on clinical laboratory testing.

ARUP Laboratories has a comprehensive Guide to Clinical Laboratory Testing as well as other educational resources.

Order your lab tests online at HealthCheck USA or from Quest Diagnostics. QuestDirect offers patients "Personal Health Reports for Tests You Choose" and includes significant patient-centered information regarding lab tests.

US Wellness Inc. specializes in the establishment of centers offering on-site health screenings and laboratory testing accompanied by patient counseling and information services. Some of these are located in pharmacies in large grocery chains.

Labtest.com is an ASP (application service provider) for the delivery of lab tests online, targeting commercial labs and their physician clients.

The Doctor's Doctor. A group of pathologists in Torrence, California, whose web site provides information for patients re diseases, lab reports and the role of the pathologist. For $50, they will translate a pathology report into plain English. The site also provides a great deal of information regarding specific diseases with references to peer-reviewed pathology journals.

Scienteur is a venture of Eli Lilly and Company (launched in March 2004), designed as a "networking tool to provide outsourcing services for toxicology, pathology and drug disposition research." You can register as a provider of services or as a buyer (with a proposed project).

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Evolving Technologies

Bio-IT World is a magazine with a commerical point of view that reports on bioinformatics and other applications of information technology in the life sciences.

BioLuminate and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories are developing a "smart needle" to aid in breast cancer detection. It uses light beams to measure six parameters and can also be configured to deliver therapies.

See the "Genetics and Molecular Diagnostics" page for links to companies involved in the development of genetic testing and therapeutics.

Japanese manufacturers are still the leaders in the development of health-monitoring toilets.

Medical Automation Systems, Inc. hosts PointofCare.net with news and articles about point-of-care testing.

Mobile labs--in a suitcase (Portable Medical Laboratories, Inc.), or in a vehicle (Lifeline, Medcoach.com).

Technology Networks Ltd. maintains a series of sites devoted to commercial development of new technologies in ADME and toxicology, clinical chemistry, genomics-proteomics, and more.

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Getting a Web Site

Setting up a web site? Want to know who owns the name you want? Look it up at Allwhois.com. For example, pathology.com is already registered.

TopHosts and Web Host Directory are two sites (among many) that help people to locate hosts for their pages.

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Issues

Privacy rules for electronic transactions--latest information regarding HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is available from the HHS Office for Civil Rights.

Physicians for a National Health Program

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The Laboratory Industry

Advance for Medical Laboratory Professionals is one of many Advance magazines directed at people in health care fields. News, practical advice, success stories, reports from national professional meetings, job search, other features. See also Advance for Administrators of the Laboratory.

G-2 Reports.com is the home of four significant newsletters for clinical laboratories. The original National Intelligence Report provides information on congressional and regulatory-body activities that impact the lab industry. The others are Laboratory Industry Report, Diagnostic Testing and Technology Report, and G-2 Compliance Report. People in this Department have been subscribing and attending G-2 conferences for years (their site says they began in 1979). We're glad to see that they're now developing an extensive web site.

Medical Laboratory Observer. Another news magazine directed at a broad spectrum of lab professionals. Clinical Lab Reference (CLR) has a searchable text/rare text index, equipment/services index, and reference tables.

Park City Solutions is a laboratory consulting and management services provider.

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Quality Assurance

The US Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides background on healthcare quality issues, funding opportunities, and research findings.

The American Society for Quality is a good place to look up information on specific quality assurance procedures and methods. For instance, a search for Root Cause Analysis led to a number of articles including "Root Cause Analysis for Beginners".

College of American Pathologists laboratory accreditation program.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations provides details of their accreditation and quality assurance programs and their major news items on their home page. The related Joint Commission Resources has many products and subcription resources, but also free content. For example, older issues of publications are accessible without subscribing, as are special reports, such as the 2005 Patient Safety Guidelines.

NCCLS, formerly the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards, is now a global organization concerned with development of standards for healthcare quality, but still provides much valuable information regarding laboratory operations and standards. See "Shop NCCLS" for a good overview.

Some Unintended Consequences of Information Technology in Health Care: The Nature of Patient Care Information System-related Errors, an article by Joan S. Ash, PhD, MLS, Marc Berg, MD, PhD and Enrico Coiera, MBBS, PhD in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2004;11:104-112)

The University of Washington offers lab safety training and lab competency assessment software. Their e-mailed newsletter, Lab Voice, addresses issues regarding patient safety and prevention of lab errors.

Westgard Quality Corportion has information on laboratory quality control including Six Sigma, CLIA, QC software.

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