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Background Brief

CCCLW’s mission focuses collective efforts to increase the number of qualified medical laboratory professionals; increase healthcare and public health awareness of our value in achieving positive patient outcomes; and enhance the image of medical laboratory professionals.
 
Recently, members of CCCLW determined that our ability to fulfill our mission is being adversely impacted by the profession’s lack of visibility and by an almost singular focus on reducing laboratory costs. The cost perspective is itself both puzzling and vexing. Laboratory medicine represents only 3% of the national health expenditure. Making substantial cuts in expenses will make very little difference to the cost of healthcare. Yet the inappropriate ordering of tests and utilization of test results can have a dramatic downstream impact on patient outcomes and health system expenses.
 
Furthermore, laboratory medicine provides value not only to individual patients, but to society at-large. While contributing directly to individuals through the diagnosis of conditions and the monitoring of both recovery and wellness, laboratory professionals also support societal goals through population-based prevention strategies and surveillance.
 
Without knowledgeable laboratory professionals focused on improving utilization of laboratory services:

• Significant benefits in both patient outcomes, healthcare economics, and population health will not be realized, and
  
• Increasing harm can be expected.  It is this assertion that is intuitive yet largely unmeasured and unproven. Reversing that gap is key to demonstrating the value of the laboratory and laboratory professional. Identifying measures of value that laboratory professionals add (or can add) to the system (separately and in addition to the value of the utilized analytes) is anticipated to generate insights that guide development of a balanced approach to the twin needs of operational efficiency and clinical effectiveness.