How a Laboratory Information Management System Can Drive Revenue in Medical Labs

Although clinical laboratories are essential to providing high-quality patient care—with about 70 percent of medical decisions relying on diagnostic test results, according to the CDC—labs struggle to achieve profitability. Ongoing industry issues, including shortages of qualified staff, shrinking insurance reimbursements for tests, rising operating costs, and changing regulatory standards, are putting pressure on already thin operating margins.

Diagnostic labs commonly view their laboratory information management system (LIMS) as a cost center. This outdated view of LIMS may be based on experience with legacy systems. What many clinical lab managers don’t realize is that they can leverage this important technology to boost revenue and the profitability of their business by directly integrating their LIMS with telehealth platforms and other digital systems used by the healthcare providers (HCPs) they serve.

Tackling interoperability challenges with LIMS

Medical practices, in turn, can benefit significantly from electronic integration with the diagnostic laboratories they routinely use. Clinicians often rely on smaller private labs across the US for ordering and processing patient tests and generating reports. But they may be reluctant to connect their office information management software directly with multiple labs’ LIMS due to the expense, which can run up to thousands of dollars per connection.

Unfortunately, the lack of interoperability can contribute to delays in obtaining patient results if a clinician maintains more than one office location or is licensed to provide telehealth services across several states.

To best realize a mutually beneficial outcome, laboratories should look for a cloud-based, SaaS LIMS that connects with HCP offices, as well as other independent labs, to ensure flexibility and scalability. There are several cloud-based LIMS platforms that offer pay-as-you-go transactional pricing and require no initial capital investment.

In particular, a system that affords access to a secure, private lab-to-lab network will allow independent labs to expand their test processing capacity and manage overflow work by teaming up with other small labs across the US. Additionally, a LIMS that is fully integrated with clinical and financial operations can track revenue contributions from HCP customers for more effective data analysis and business planning.

Benefits of adopting a fully integrated LIMS in a clinical lab

Adopting an all-inclusive LIMS platform that enables diagnostic labs to communicate directly with independent medical practices can

• enhance patient care,
• improve operating efficiency, and
• lower costs.

And a LIMS that offers HCP offices access to labs nationwide, even for a nominal fee, can ease the burden on staff and reduce practice costs—which can truly be a win-win for both parties.

Electronic integration of laboratory and medical office systems for managing patient information also fosters a closer connection between labs and their customers—clinicians and their patients.

The bottom line: Medical laboratories have a golden opportunity to use cloud-based LIMS to recast this core operating component from a cost center to a source of greater revenue and profit through integrating their system with their HCP customers.