The practice of laboratory medicine continues to experience revolutionary change as a result of consolidation, an increasing number of “waived” tests, and changing medical practices. These factors have already had a significant impact on hospital-based laboratories and will continue to affect their operations over the next decade.
Current Trends
Read about current trends in utilization, medical practice, care delivery, and regulations and their facility impact.
Hospital Data Centers Straining to Keep Up With New Demands
The hospital data center — once an onerous operational cost center — is now a critical component in delivering quality patient care, ensuring regulatory compliance, and enabling collaboration among caregivers. Hospital networks today support everything from traditional accounting to highly advanced remote surgery and diagnostic procedures using telemedicine. As use of digital imaging increases logarithmically so does the need to store more and more information — and in a wider variety of formats — that must be accessible in real time. Historically, stakeholder groups for data center projects consisted of information technology, facilities management, and security staff. Today, active participants may include the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Information Officer, compliance managers, sustainability managers, risk management staff, and a variety of physicians and other caregivers.
Proton Therapy Is a Growing Business
Proton therapy is a type of stereotactic radiosurgery that uses proton beams instead of X-rays. In proton therapy, a beam of protons is used to blast diseased tissue precisely. It extracts positively charged protons from hydrogen gas and accelerates them through a cyclotron, or particle accelerator, up to nearly two-thirds the speed of light. The protons are guided to the tumor site by powerful magnetic and electrical fields, and carry just enough charge to reach a precise point in the tumor.
Noise in Hospitals is Getting Lots of Media Attention
Everyone knows how loud it can be in the modern hospital. While all that noise was once considered a tolerable byproduct of the high-tech healing process, a growing body of research suggests that the noise by itself is actually harmful to patients — interfering with the healing process, increasing the possibility of medical errors, and increasing the stress level of everyone nearby. Studies have shown that patients sleep poorly and take longer to recover from surgery in noisier hospitals and that noisy neonatal intensive care units may delay the development of premature babies. Multiple studies have shown that noise delays wound healing in mice.
Fluctuating Demand for Hospital Beds
Starting in the 1980s, healthcare strategists and policy experts encouraged hospitals to reduce their surplus inpatient bed capacity in response to declining admissions, use rates, and lengths of stay — as a result of the advent of Medicare’s diagnosis related groups (DRG) payment methodology in the public sector and managed care in the private sector. Hospitals responded to changes in demand by shifting their resources. Between 1980 and 2003, community hospitals in the United States took 175,000 inpatient beds out of service — an 18 percent reduction — through downsizings, consolidations, and closures. At the same time, skilled nursing and subacute care facilities were developed to provide a less expensive and less resource-intensive alternative for patients requiring a lengthy recuperation. Home health agencies also proliferated. Since 2003, the number of hospital beds has declined less dramatically — a reduction of another 12,700 beds. Although, nationally, inpatient admissions rose from 1992 to 2012, both the rate of inpatient admissions per 1,000 population and the average length of stay have declined to an all time low — resulting in an overall decline in the demand for inpatient beds.
Use of Observation Status is Increasing
Observation was meant to be a short period of time for healthcare providers to assess patients and decide whether a patient requires admission for inpatient care or can be discharged. Typically this was meant to last less than 24 hours and only rarely spanned longer than 48 hours. Over the past ten years, however, the incidence and duration of observation status stays has increased significantly as a result of changes in Medicare reimbursement.