Office of the inspector ge"neral. All labs are in business to make money, genius. Did you really say radar of a small lab??? As far as the OIG is concerned, does compliance training and "pull through" ring a bell for you. Their radar is raised whenever there is a fraud whistle blown.
>>Office of the inspector ge"neral.<<
Oh, I see what you did there. You separated the “ge” from “neral” to imply a GE education somewhere within this response. Wow! Did everyone else get this? Folks … this is Comedy Gold!
>>>All labs are in business to make money, genius.<<<
All for profit companies are in biz to make money. Very astute of you. But, a company makes money to exchange something of value among their customers. That’s how business has been run from the fur pelt trade and even earlier in the city-state Greek communities 2500 years ago. The “making money” part of it is not separate by the product/service. Physicians are also in business to make money, but not at the expense of patient care.
So a clinical laboratory is not in business to make money without being in business to provide timely, accurate and usable diagnostic data. There will never be a complete split of the “money making” and the delivery of products or services. Both are part of the same commercial continuum.
Now, getting back to the original point of the thread. A company has a mission statement to explicate their starting point; usually a delivery of value or a promise to a quality product services. A mission statement never follows the revenue, but revenue and business success is a corollary of a commitment to its offering. Why else would a client be a client?
Mission drift is a company taking their eye off the client; or the revenue stream. To my original point, there are laboratories in business to make money in spite of poor service levels. These are crappy labs, usually found in neighborhoods that are a high % of Medicaid.
>>>Did you really say radar of a small lab???<<<
Yes, youngin. I did. The % of the overall budget allocated to the OIG is teeny and getting smaller-20% of that department will be gutting in one year. They have 1-2 thousand complaints of Medicare fraud that aren’t even looked at. Their resources are so strapped that only the big labs, the bigger bang for the OIG buck labs are even investigated – not small labs (typically). Again, at this very space and time there are hundreds of labs in every major city that are purposely fleecing the state and federal programs; labs that are too small to be worth an actual investigation. There have been a few unlucky small, but ballsy labs that have been investigated, only to pay 400 bucks to LegalZoom.com for a name change. Viola! It’s that easy.
>>>As far as the OIG is concerned, does compliance training and "pull through" ring a bell for you? <<<
Not sure what pretend assertion you are trying to make. You seem to want to mention “compliance training” and “pull through” in a sentence regarding the OIG, but for no apparent reason other than letting us know you know those terms.
Compliance training is only mandated by the federal government if and only if the lab has been fined for Medicare fraud (Stark or Anti-Kickback). What exactly are you trying to say here? Do you think small laboratories under the OIG radar actually have corporate integrity programs with the federal government?
Ooh, look at me. I know the term “pull through.” You seem like you would also be enamored by silver things or words that start with the letter “Q.” What did you want to say about “pull through?” This revenue is completely compliant when a provider is not incentivized to send this work to a lab. Pull through is fine unless the lost leaders or non-pull through business is illegally priced or lacks an “arm’s length” transaction to fuel this pull through.
>>>Their radar is raised whenever there is a fraud whistle blown.<<<
Ahhh…you innocent lamb. Nope, it doesn’t work that way and hasn’t for quite a while. The OIG needs an ROI to justify their budget dollars. Any lab under 200 million will not be considered (roughly). The good news is; the OIG doesn’t have to put these crappy labs out of business. Eventually, poor service levels and results will drive down patient outcomes and only the worst of the worst physicians will keep using these labs while getting free testing, kickbacks, office managers and other personnel not related to the collection, transportation and performance of the laboratory testing.
PathInc arguably falls within the crappy labs category, but it does raise the mission-drift question of fueling a lab with capital in order to sell it for a huge profit. However, if that was their mission, than no drift. It does bring up another important point. Laboratory is part of healthcare and healthcare is in a mixed economy. Healthcare is both in the private and public sectors due to the state and national payors and the subsequent tax payors that pay for therapies/treatments that might ensue from poor diagnostic medicine. There is no such thing as a free emergency room visit.
