Several years ago I worked for a national lab. Our company’s individual AP labs of different sizes and specialties were sprinkled from coast to coast. The network functioned with each lab maintaining a considerable amount of autonomy and labs’ LIS systems ranged from antiquated to new and shiny and from home-brew DOS-based to the latest big box flavor-of-the-week technology.
On the sales side, not unlike most other businesses, acquiring new customers came down to service. I know our pathologists and lab staff put patients and servicing our referring physician’s practices at the highest priority. With the adoption of EMR software at the practice level, the normal expectations of service in the lab industry has quickly grown to include connectivity as a must have. The reaction of this particular national lab was to invest tens of millions of dollars to build a web-based lab system that would put all labs on a common platform. This is a tremendous effort to accomplish.
Enter the opportunity for local labs. Community-based labs can accommodate the needs of today’s referring physician practices with web-based tools like Pathagility. Pathagility was born out of the need to meet today’s demands of connectivity and communication that can leverage existing platform investments and looks at each lab’s strengths and needs to help pathology groups deliver reports and information. The playing field is wide open and tools like Pathagility’s WorkPath, ReportPath, and DataPath can give today’s labs the advantage.
The challenge of reduced reimbursement forces efficiencies in staffing and technology investments. Now that customized technology solutions like Pathagility’s are affordable, inflexible big box tools are no longer the only option. Pathagility will look at your practice and offer the tools your lab needs to give you the edge today.