Is your pathology lab executing a growth strategy?Â
Have you hired a sales person or team to grow your specimen count?Â
We talk to pathology groups daily that are at some point in the process of developing or executing a sales strategy.  They are either 1) attempting to grow their specimen count or 2) defending against larger laboratories with more resources.  To successfully compete, there are 3 items that laboratory sales people need to be armed with in the field:
1. Connectivity (and a lot of it!)
It is critical that a modern laboratory can offer a full menu of connectivity options.  Not every referring physician is looking for the same type of report delivery or consumption.  Also, some connectivity options are more expensive than others, and they need to be[...]

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Today’s fast paced world requires information be available instantly and on-demand. This has never been more true than it is right now in the pathology industry. Patients, hospitals, and medical offices need results, and they need them fast. We understand this and have developed a new tool that connects offices, doctors, and remote facilities directly to your lab facilities. We call it FilePath.
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FilePath allows your lab reports, accession data, and other result materials to be transmitted directly from your LIS to any office you do business with, instantly. FilePath uses the power of the Internet to transfer this data from your site, to our secure data center, and out to your clients.
When your clients receive your reports they can transfer them directly into their[...]

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Wow!  2011 was a great year for Pathagility with the addition of some great new clients and some exciting projects with our existing customer base.  We’ve been heads down in delivery mode.  As we turn our attention to 2012, we want to share some of the client experiences we’ve had over the past several months.  There were some great lessons learned, big efficiencies uncovered and exciting new products developed.  We hope some of these topics are helpful for you and we encourage your feedback, comments and suggestions.  Here are just a few of the topics we plan to cover…
process efficiency through bar coding
laboratory (LIS) access anywhere-starting a lab?
redefining your lab?
scalability – system needs from 0 to 60
online requisitions
remote printing increase sales through connectivity
Pathagility on-site server deployment
Who[...]

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Pathagility will have a booth at CAP ‘11 next month.  Hopefully the Dallas weather in September will be a tad bit milder than August (and July for that matter) has been.  Whether you are a pathologist, lab manager or a systems vendor; we hope you will drop by and visit with us.  We would like to hear about the opportunities and challenges you are facing and would be happy to discuss our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) LIS and physician connectivity products/services.  Â
So, if you are going to be there, let us know!  We would like to setup a few minutes to meet you.

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We were pleased to welcome Pathology Associates (Lufkin, TX) as a new Pathagility client earlier this month, and we are also pleased to report that the migration from their previous LIS to Pathagility’s web-based LIS (WorkPath) was extremely smooth.  In fact, you may not believe the turnaround time if we told you:)  Be looking for a case study in the near future related to this implementation, because it provides great examples of the tangible benefits of a SaaS platform.  We’re excited that PA is adding another perspective to Pathagility’s client user group which continues to drive platform innovation and enhancements.Â
By design, Pathagility provides a platform that enhances the existing systems environment of a pathology group/lab, but we also provide a proven, web-based  LIS as a replacement when it makes business sense.   Our clients and prospects[...]

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If you are a pathology group or laboratory, how do your referring physicians want to receive report information?
Fax? Web Portal? EMR interface?The answer is something along the lines of…”the way they ask for it, when they ask for it!”  Right?  To compete against the mega, commercial labs, pathology report distribution flexibility is essential.  Not only is it important to be able to provide this flexibility, but it is important to your bottom line that it is cost effective.  Below are three (3) ways to achieve this goal:
1) Make sure your LIS is designed to foster distribution flexibility.  If not, work with a vendor that can “overlay”  or replace your legacy system and provide the needed flexibility.
2) Utilize an integration engine  or an integration partner that will facilitate efficient[...]

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We are pleased to be one of the vendors to participate in the April 2011 CAP Today article called “Lab-link vendors – on a mission with ‘mobile’ and more.“  Pathagility competes in the Lab-Provider Links market with our ReportPath product.  We appreciate CAP Today for allowing us to participate in multiple product market categories and related articles.
Here is the opening excerpt from the article…
“It’s a lesson in Economics 101: The federal government wants hospitals and medical practices to adopt electronic medical records, so it gives them “meaningful use dollars” to do so.  And with the increased use of EMRs comes greater demand for products that link these systems to other medical systems.  This, in turn, increases the business of many lab-provider links vendors, giving them the wherewithal to enhance[...]

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We received a call from one of our lab customers requesting a results only interface for one of their referring physicians.  The referring physician has sent only a small volume of cases to the lab, and the cost from the EMR vendor alone would make the cost of an interface unjustifiable.  The referring physician group was under the impression that an interface was required by the new healthcare mandates.  The buzz around federal reimbursement dollars for medical practices under the ARRA (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) has created some confusion.   Keep in mind, that a full results only EMR interface is not the only option to satisfy the electronic results requirement.  Parsing fact from fiction is not easily done, and physicians are[...]

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In the March issue of CAP Today, Karen L. Wagner did an article on the changing middleware landscape called Middleware to “littleware”: vendors catering to smaller labs.  She notes three main forces behind the changes in this market in the past two years…
1.  ARRA
2.  Increased EHR adoption
3.  Middleware vendors start catering to smaller/physician owned labs
Pathagility’s own Mike Heckman was  interviewed for this article and discusses how we provide value to this market by working with other software/hardware vendors (LIS, EMR, instrument, etc.)  While Pathagility offers one of the only SaaS LIS (WorkPath) products in the market, we recognize that not all labs are looking for a replacement strategy but need to enhance their current environment to answer the connectivity call of their referring physicians.  Pathagility offers this smaller/physician-owned lab market all[...]

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Last week I attended a formal, non-Pathagility  related event where we were seated randomly with individuals with varying backgrounds.  Among the group at my table was an investment broker, a restaurant chain owner, a non-profit director, and clinician at a pediatric practice.   The clinician (Kathy – for the sake of this post) and I were seated next to one another, and after discussing our work/organization backgrounds, we had a fascinating conversation about EMRs and lab interfacing.Â
Following are some of the interesting perspectives taken from our conversation:
*It is always interesting to see and hear a physician’s or clinician’s response when the topic of EMR comes up.  Kathy’s first response was one of frustration even though it was evident that she saw the benefits of their moving forward with digitizing their current manual processes.
*Kathy’s clinic changed lab providers because one[...]

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