Benchmarking hospital laboratory financial and operational performance

The movement toward more integrated delivery systems requires hospital administrators, medical staffs, and health care network organizations to consider strategies that will meet the future challenges facing laboratory services. Many health care experts predict that the number of hospital inpatient days, staffed acute care beds, and length of stay will continue their precipitous decline, and then stabilize during the next four to five years. Hospitals should carefully evaluate how their laboratories might be affected as a result of the decline in inpatient services and the integration of health care services at all levels. Hospital executive management must find a way to manage staffing levels and technical resources in order to maintain quality patient services in the face of declining test volume. This Special Report discusses relevant benchmarks intended to help hospital administrators and laboratory directors identify "best practices" in hospital laboratories so that comparisons of patterns of care and financial operations can be made. Benchmarking the relative financial and operational performance of hospital laboratories allows health care planners to design the most appropriate laboratory services delivery system for future hospital inpatient and outpatient market demands. Factors influencing financial and operation performance will be investigated, including utilization, testing costs, staffing mix, productivity, and organizational structure. This will be followed by a discussion on the future of laboratories and the trend toward regional laboratories owned by hospital consortiums.