What is worth of lab service?

What is worth of lab service?

Despite the incremental clinical value that laboratory tests provide, laboratory medicine and lab chemicals are today viewed as many other economic enterprises.

Diagnostic testing's influence on a healthcare budget is less than 2.5%, but its profit is above 100%, with a net profit margin that is seven times more than any other human enterprise.

More significantly, the effect of laboratory tests on clinical results is now undeniable, since their utilisation will enhance clinical pathways far more than any other diagnostic examination.

Efforts to downplay the relevance of laboratory reagents as a cost centre, or even the notion that public laboratory services may be safely removed or outsourced.

Laboratory medicine is not only critical to patient safety and patient flow, and will continue to be so for many years to come.

Though it is also a cost-effective resource for hospitals.

For screening, detecting, hypothesising, and treatment monitoring of most human diseases, laboratory diagnostics is one of the most widely used diagnostic domains.

As is widely accepted, laboratory tests are used far more frequently in medical decision than any other diagnostic profession.

It was also stressed that the vast majority of hospitalised patients (98%) have undergone at least one lab tests, with the rate dropping to 56 percent in the emergency rooms and 29 percent in outpatients.

Notwithstanding the additional clinical value that laboratory testing can create, laboratory diagnostics is today viewed as many other economic enterprises by some policymakers and administrators, and is thus committed to scale economy and rated appropriately.

But, even from this strange vantage point, nothing is as it seems.

In terms of the overall economic impact of diagnostic testing, new research shows that in vitro diagnostic testing accounts for less than 2.5 percent of total healthcare expenditures in several countries throughout the world.

Because there are few studies based on an effective activity-based costing analysis in the literature, it's unclear if there's a way to save money by simply raising test volumes.

The link between volumes and expenses, on the other hand, is more complex.

Several factors influence the total cost per test, particularly in sophisticated studies.

The numerous continuous attempts to downplay the significance of laboratory medicine as a cost centre, or even the notion that public laboratory services may be adequately terminated or outsourced to private external commercial diagnostic factories, frequently situated far from hospitals, must be vigorously contested.

We are convinced that laboratory medicine is not only critical to patient care and patient flow, and will continue to be so for many years to come.

Though it is also a valuable economic resource for healthcare facilities, even without accounting for the significant "profit" associated with better early/improved diagnosis outcomes.