The physician office laboratory: profitability under managed care

CLIA has forced many physician offices to close their labs because the costs of operating them have been out-weighed by the revenues they generated. Managed care has imposed even further restrictions because managed care organizations (MCO) limit reimbursement to a very few in-house procedures. To reverse this trend, physician offices must make their labs attractive to MCOs by emphasizing quality, promoting customer satisfaction, discussing cost effectiveness and discounting laboratory fees. Once these are set, the next step is negotiating with the MCOs.