Clinical labs are at a crossroads as hospitals face a historic financial crisis and labor shortage.1, 2 The pressure on health system leadership to cut costs has never been greater. And every laboratory that is defined as a cost center may be at risk of being outsourced.
Yet, opportunities abound to redefine diagnostic labs as revenue drivers. Finding and acting on those opportunities, however, requires a mind shift. A new way of thinking about what it means to be a lab leader can make all the difference. Here’s how.
Two trends are merging that are putting labs at risk—and also creating new pathways toward growth:
1. Healthcare systems are saddled with structural challenges that are pressuring all service lines to deliver greater profits. Yet labs play a critical role in helping clinicians diagnose and treat disease. This is a moment to shine a light on the value of the diagnostic lab.
2. New care delivery models, such as home-based and point-of-care testing, are emerging and risk disrupting the lab’s traditional role in patient care. Yet, those models are also an opportunity for labs to connect directly with consumers and their communities with new services.
To transform risk to opportunity, lab directors must adapt a for-profit rather than not-for-profit mindset. Laboratorians must learn to think as much like MBAs as MDs and PhDs.
Take TriCore, New Mexico’s leader in clinical laboratory services, an organization that has expanded its services in multiple innovative directions. “We’re nonprofit, but we’re not operating at a loss,” says COO Eric Carbonneau. “We’ve taken the approach that many businesses do, and we’ve diversified revenue sources. We’ve had to change, we had to bring that business acumen.”
Thinking like business leaders opened new directions for TriCore to better serve both communities and clinicians—and establish new revenue sources. But it wasn’t a simple pivot.