What's New: April 2015

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

CMS goes off-off-label on BGMS

CMS took an unusual step on March 13th, 2015. They "temporarily withdrew" a memorandum issued on November 21, 2014 on the Off-Label/Modified Use of Waived Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems (BGMS). But then this withdrawn memo was also reissued as a draft, with additional draft clarifications. What's going on?

Has the CMS policy on BGMS fallen "critically ill"?

 

The Top 5-and-a-half Best LabSafeQuality CompareGrades

When Ratings, Rankings, and Grades proliferate, confusion often reigns. For labs and healthcare institutions, there's the additional challenge of new metrics that are impacting reimbursement. Some of these new metrics may be unproven or dubious. Which raises the question: is the laboratory safe from these metrics? For that matter, why don't we see more ranking of laboratories, methods, and instruments? 

Is your method, instrument, and/or lab in the top best grade?

 

Sigma-metrics across the Total Testing Spectrum

A recent paper accomplished a trifecta of sorts: measuring quality indicators not only in the PRE-analytical and POST-analytical phases of testing, but also in the analytical phase of testing. We convert the analytical Sigma-metrics to match the short-term Sigma results and compare the error rates of all the different phases of the testing spectrum.

When a laboratory in Egypt looks at their total testing process, where are the most errors found?