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Case Study: Current Challenges For Clincal Diagnostic Commercialization

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Current Challenges for Clincal Diagnostic Commercialization

The issues presented in business aspects of clinical laboratories are agreeable as valid challenges for commercial investors. I do believe that the most important issue presented in the content is marketing challenges for commercialized testing.

Clinical laboratories are reaching the 6 Sigma performance methodology in the analytical stage of a particular test. However, regardless of the commercialization, physicians are still ordering the incorrect tests during the pre-analytical stage of laboratory testing. In turn, a major portion of physicians are then misinterpreting the incorrect tests ordered in the post-analytical stage of testing (Wolf, n.d.). Another point, studies performed …show more content…

Medical students are mostly taught to interpret anatomical and pathological testing. However, majority of tests ordered by physicians are clinical diagnostic tests which are not taught in medical school as priority or valued tests (Wolf, n.d.). As a result, physicians end up ordering the wrong diagnostic tests from the laboratory, which in turn, are being misinterpreted or misused due to the lack of possible medical education. Not only that, these test results are not being used appropriately and payers (health insurers, HMO’s, Medicare, ACO’s, pharmacy benefit managers) are not willing to reimburse something that is not being used properly. An example given in Professor Wolf’s lecture was about pharmacogenetics (n.d.). Patients and physicians have adopted these tests for guidance on pharmaceutical therapy, targeted medicine, or personalized therapy. There are a number of labs performing these tests but the testing is undervalued by Medicare for reimbursement. The argument or claim for these expensive and particular tests are that the clinical utility (CU) does not suffice for testing validity (Wolf, n.d.). In reality, the test payers may be holding back by providing such claims because clinical diagnostics may turn into a costly ordeal due to the potential of such …show more content…

Moving forward, Protecting Access To Medicare Act (PAMA) is expected to be the first real change to how diagnostic tests are priced and how those prices are reimbursed by Medicare and how they will impact the commercial community. PAMA has set limitations on CPT (cost per tests) codes by using private payor reports. A marketing concern alongside PAMA CPT codes would be private organizations like MolDx developing unique codes for molecular testing as competitors in the market. According to an article by Turna Ray, PAMA is open to the possibility of adopting MolDX codes as unique identifiers that meets CMS' requirements along with AMA also having the option to adopt MolDx codes as CPT codes to meet the provisions of the new law (2015). Despite PAMA’s objectives to provide change in commercialization, the regulatory attempt might just be posed as a price reduction initiative because payers lack the resources to regulate price adjustments (The One Word Takeaway On PAMA, 2017). Legislative impact seems to cause many sub issues in marketing for commercialized tests. PAMA seems to have a positive outlook in terms of a fair market rate and variety of codes to cover all testing for patients; only time will tell how this regulatory process will really impact commercialized

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