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Office Laboratory Check Up: Is Your Lab Financially Fit?

Free Member Download

Determine the Financial Health of Your Office Lab with ACP's profitability software!

All too frequently the perception that operating a lab isn't worth the regulatory hassles is based on "gut instinct" rather than sound financial analysis. That's why the Practice Management Center, in conjunction with Venture Resources, a leading laboratory consulting firm, developed Office Laboratory Check Up: Is Your Lab Financially Fit? This user-friendly, spreadsheet program is designed to analyze and help improve the overall financial health of your office lab. It allows you to manipulate data in order to perform "what if" scenarios, and it's the first software program designed to meet the specific needs of small- and medium-sized physician office labs.

Don't Just Rely on Gut Instinct. Base Decisions on Hard Data!

Get immediate answers to your questions about:

• Starting/Expanding/Closing: Does my lab make enough profit to warrant the investment of time and money? Should I either close my lab or invest in even more equipment? Just plug in your lab data and this software allows you to look at your lab's overall profitability. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results. You can also use it to analyze the feasibility of starting a new lab or adding services to an existing one.
• Optimization: Which tests should be done in-office and which tests should be referred out? What is the best mix of in-office testing for the health plans with which I contract? Office Laboratory Check Up helps you determine what mix will maximize the profitability of your laboratory testing, as well as what the financial consequences might be of offering more in-office lab tests for added patient convenience and quality.
• Test Pricing: How do I set a viable fee schedule for managed care contracting? How would a proposed capitation rate for lab testing affect my lab financially? At what prices can I afford to compete with other vendors for contracted lab services? The software offers a mechanism to help you develop bids on managed care and other contracts for lab services--allowing you to negotiate with payers to maintain or add tests that otherwise would be referred out.

It's easy to use!
All you need is:

• A PC with a Pentium Processor
• Microsoft Windows
• Excel 5.0 (or later) spreadsheet program

You'll receive:

• An educational user's manual, including general tips on possible lab enhancements and modifications, as well as model laboratory data for comparison (In a two-physician practice what are the typical categories of tests I can expect to perform profitably in my lab? What equipment would I need? What should be the variable costs per test?)
• The Medicare laboratory fee schedule for the most commonly ordered tests
• Typical POL information to substitute in case you don't have all the specific data needed by the software (such as reagent costs per test, complete insurance reimbursement schedules, etc.) or to compare your lab data against industry norms

How Today's Health Care Environment Affects Your Lab
As regulatory and managed care mandates increase, physicians are more concerned than ever about maintaining the financial viability of their office labs. Patient access to in-office lab testing and the physician's ability to make quick and accurate diagnoses are jeopardized when managed care organizations demand that testing previously done in-office be sent out to reference labs. Physicians need a tool to help them decide whether they can afford to compete with discounted reference lab rates and to determine the impact of regulatory costs on lab profitability.

Download the attached PowerPoint presentation to see actual software screens demonstrated.

How do I order?
Members, download the Office Laboratory Check Up MS Excel spreadsheet and user manual free of charge.

Non-members may purchase OLCU through ACP's Medical Laboratory Evaluation (MLE) department.

Questions?

Page updated: 07-19-06

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