Abstract
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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 4-10 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Health Care Manager |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2010 |
Keywords
- Environmental scan
- Health care policy
- Laboratories
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Leadership and Management
- Health(social science)
- Health Policy
- Care Planning