Jonathan Genzen, MD, PhD, FASCP, clinical pathology professor at the University of Utah and chief medical officer and senior director of government affairs at ARUP Laboratories, and ASCP President-Elect Gregory N. Sossaman, MD, MASCP, clinical pathologist and service line lead for pathology and laboratory medicine at Ochsner Health, New Orleans, will lead a session, “Public Policies Impacting the Practice of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on Friday, Sept. 6, at the ASCP 2024 Annual Meeting. The session will be moderated by Greg Davis, MD, FASCP, a member of the ASCP Board of Directors.
Dr. Genzen’s presentation will focus on laboratory developed tests, which the Food and Drug Administration has claimed it has authority to regulate. He will provide an update on a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s authority over LDTs. He’ll also discuss ASCP’s efforts to support the lawsuit and possible legislative options Congress might consider to supersede the FDA rule.
Following the discussion on LDTs, Dr. Sossaman will give an overview of ASCP’s advocacy wins on the recent Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) final rule. ASCP succeeded in reversing a policy recognize nursing degrees for high complexity testing. He will also provide an update on the Medicare Physician and Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedules, which have suffered numerous cuts over the years. These fee schedules have not kept pace with inflation over the years. Since they are often used as benchmarks by private insurance companies to determine what they pay, fixing the Medicare payment rates is crucial to improving the bottom line for clinical laboratory and pathology services, which influences everyone’s salaries.
At the end of this policy session, attendees will be encouraged to contact federal policymakers urging then to fix Medicare payment rates.
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