Stanford Medical Center selling off Pathology?

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LADoc00

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Intriguing news from the Dark Report, apparently Stanford is selling off the outpatient Pathology business to the highest bidder.

What can we make of this?

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Intriguing news from the Dark Report, apparently Stanford is selling off the outpatient Pathology business to the highest bidder.

What can we make of this?

It must be overburdening the faculty having to do a bunch of community practice pathology and/or they don't need the cash.
 
http://www.darkdaily.com/laboratory...arilion-Stanford-Sell-Laboratory-Outreach.php

"At Stanford University Medical Center, plans to sell its lab outreach business are not surprising. Since it began to ramp up its lab outreach around 2003, Stanford proved willing to spend lots of capital upfront, despite the meager reimbursement for laboratory services that has existed in California for the past 15 years. Administration finally decided that prospects were poor for its lab outreach business to deliver an acceptable return on investment. Thus, its decision to sell the laboratory outreach business at this time. "

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/03/10/daily71.html?ana=from_rss

"Specialized services, such as surgical pathology, hematopathology and esoteric testing, some of which have been provided for many years, will continue to be provided by Stanford, Migdol said. He added that the part of the outreach services that are being offered for sale provide basic laboratory testing, such as blood chemistry tests, complete blood cell counts and urinalyses, to clients such as doctor's offices and group practices, which are not part of Stanford University Medical Center. "
 
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It must be overburdening the faculty having to do a bunch of community practice pathology and/or they don't need the cash.

Stanford was apparently losing money and decided to back off the outreach gig...This decision mainly affects the automated/routine type labs. As caffeinegirl adequately addressed, surgpath/heme and other major areas won't really be affected. I really don't see resident education being affected...well, actually yes: in CP, likely will be getting less of those annoying and uneducational panic values. boo hoo.
 
Stanford was apparently losing money and decided to back off the outreach gig...This decision mainly affects the automated/routine type labs. As caffeinegirl adequately addressed, surgpath/heme and other major areas won't really be affected. I really don't see resident education being affected...well, actually yes: in CP, likely will be getting less of those annoying and uneducational panic values. boo hoo.

I have no clue how you could possibly lose money on CP testing. Actually that would take colossal financial mismanagement as the CEO of Quest Diagnostics makes around 60 million a year and that is primarily what they do!

I hope someone, if not many people in the Stanford outpatient business office were fired for this incompetence.
 
I have no clue how you could possibly lose money on CP testing. Actually that would take colossal financial mismanagement as the CEO of Quest Diagnostics makes around 60 million a year and that is primarily what they do!

I hope someone, if not many people in the Stanford outpatient business office were fired for this incompetence.

dunno..perhaps time is money. I know of innnnnnerable issues re:specimens being mislabeled, etc. from these outreach clowns. Such a waste of time tracking things etc.
hell even in AP we sometimes get outreach biopsies from the occasional gen md's labeled as "lesion." No site, no hx. Wow, thanks a freaking lot. Maybe you didn't wanna "bias" us by reporting the patient's history of melanoma. Or maybe you're just a *******. Thank god these instances are rare...with no other history provided (well, i guess patient's name and age..although half the time they don't have these either and we have track down more info = more time wasted).
 
I think you can lose money on parts of CP, esoteric tests that aren't done very often but are profitable if you batch.

Failling that, you can also make quick $$ for the department by selling off your business for a fee. Of course, that's a one time fee, but for that one year your profits would be huge! ;)
 
Why are university based practices interested in going for outpatient community practice anatomic pathology? I know it makes money, but doesn't it take away the benefits of academics (time for teaching, education, and research)? I wonder what % of the revenue the faculty signing out the biopsies actually get? I wonder if you can say "NO" to having to take those extra cases.
 
dunno..perhaps time is money. I know of innnnnnerable issues re:specimens being mislabeled, etc. from these outreach clowns. Such a waste of time tracking things etc.
hell even in AP we sometimes get outreach biopsies from the occasional gen md's labeled as "lesion." No site, no hx. Wow, thanks a freaking lot. Maybe you didn't wanna "bias" us by reporting the patient's history of melanoma. Or maybe you're just a *******. Thank god these instances are rare...with no other history provided (well, i guess patient's name and age..although half the time they don't have these either and we have track down more info = more time wasted).

I hear you. I also hear THE F'ING BENJAMIN FRANKLINS being printed daily at UCSF by Leboit and Company because apparently he has the ability to make it work. You would think that with people like Larry Page, Jerry Yang, Filo and von Bechtolsheim in their history, Stanford would OWN marketing and computer efficiency. Stanford IS the bleeping internet, they should have plenty access to human capital to get this to work.
 
We're currently in the middle of our lecture series on management and other business issues, and we covered outreach services. We have a relatively new outreach program and it is definitely profitable for us. However, we occupy a market with not much competition. Departments in more urban areas with extensive competition from commercial labs can have trouble.
 
My med school was looking at opening up some clinics in suburban areas (read: hotbeds of patients who are privately insured) and all the local doctors got all huffy and up in arms about having to compete against a state-run agency that was supposed to be dedicated to indigent care, etc etc...

So I'm surprised local pathologists don't cry foul when academic centers fire up these outreach ventures...

BH
 
My med school was looking at opening up some clinics in suburban areas (read: hotbeds of patients who are privately insured) and all the local doctors got all huffy and up in arms about having to compete against a state-run agency that was supposed to be dedicated to indigent care, etc etc...

So I'm surprised local pathologists don't cry foul when academic centers fire up these outreach ventures...

BH

Our outreach mostly consists of CP services, which a lot of smaller hospitals aren't offering anyway. There is one GI doc over in West Virginia who sends us his GI biopsies, but that's about the only outside AP stuff that we get. Because we have protected preview time, our turnaround times on AP specimens aren't competitive with other labs.

Now that I think about it, we do get quite a few derm cases from the outside, but the TAT on those aren't too crucial.
 
For the outpatient CP they would be competing mostly with quest and labcorp and entities like that.

I don't understand the desire of getting the community practice biopsies. It takes away time from teaching and research.
 
I don't understand the desire of getting the community practice biopsies. It takes away time from teaching and research.

while I also feel your pain especially when the history is minimal to absent, I think getting these types of cases can play an important role in resident training, seeing bread n' butter type stuff (things you'll more often see in pp), particularly at larger institutions where you often more zebras than horses.
 
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I don't understand the desire of getting the community practice biopsies. It takes away time from teaching and research.

OMG, almost fell out of my chair laughing. You owe me 6 bucks for the dry cleaning for my labcoat because I spit coffee everywhere too.
 
OMG, almost fell out of my chair laughing. You owe me 6 bucks for the dry cleaning for my labcoat because I spit coffee everywhere too.

but isn't that why you go into academics? It isn't to sign out an extra 3000 gi or cervical biopsies a year on top of your normal case load and teaching responsibilities. If you are making a lot of bank off it, then maybe that would be worth it, but do you get to keep that extra money or do you just get the same academic salary that you are already guaranteed? These academic community pathology ventures are relatively new, right? Maybe they are starting them to increase academic salaries.
 
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