Hospital in-house laboratories: examining the external environment.
As hospitals fight for their portion of reimbursed health care expenditures, it will become increasingly necessary to investigate alternative funding mechanisms. In-house laboratories, which have likely been seen in the past as pure cost centers, can be repositioned to provide additional revenue to hospitals. This opportunity for in-house laboratories to be remade into profit centers is predicated upon a thorough understanding of the environmental factors affecting hospital laboratories. This article examines 4 distinct environmental factors: demographic and socioeconomic trends, reimbursement and financing, government policy, and clinical events. Each of these external environmental factors provides 2 broad sources of interest to hospitals and their in-house laboratory components: opportunities on which to capitalize and hazards against which to defend.
University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA. kcortely@mail.ucf.edu
Kendall
K
Cortelyou-Ward
Timothy
T
Rotarius
Aaron
A
Liberman
Antonio
A
Trujillo
D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003710:Demography; D004469:Economics, Hospital; D006291:Health Policy; D007349:Insurance, Health, Reimbursement; D007755:Laboratories, Hospital / Q000191:economics*; D012923:Social Class; D014481:United States