The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions has selected ASCP as the winner of the 2025 Award for Outstanding Outcomes in CE for its submission “Building Knowledge and Skills in Biomarker Testing and Assessment of Pathological Response to Improve Care for Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Melanoma.” 

The award was accepted on behalf of ASCP by Meredith Engel, MA, ASCP director of learning innovation, Melissa Kelly, PhD, ASCP senior manager in evaluation, measurement and assessment, in collaboration with Joe Kim, MD, MPH, MBA, FACHE, President of Q Synthesis. A plaque commemorating the award was presented on January 8 during the Alliance 2025 Annual Conference in Orlando, FL.  

“It is most gratifying to recognize you and your colleagues for your outstanding work,” ACEHP Membership and Operations Associate Lille Gaeta wrote in her notification email to ASCP. “It is through such efforts that we advance the quality and integrity of continuing education in the health professions. We commend your collective contributions to this goal and your commitment and dedication to our profession.” 

This is the second time the ASCP team’s work has been recognized by the Alliance in this category. Additionally, in 2023, ASCP won the Award for Excellence in Educational Design for its submission “Navigating the Emerging and Evolving Landscape of HER2-low Breast Cancer.” 

The fourth annual Cell Bowl national hematology competition, organized by Tiffany Gill, MA, MLS(ASCP)^CM, (aka Medical Lab Lady Gill ) and sponsored by ASCP (Gold Level) and CellAVision (Silver Level), experienced several “firsts” when it concluded last fall. 

The winning team from Jacksonville, FL, was the first clinical team comprising both medical laboratory technician (MLT) and medical laboratory scientist (MLS) students. Previous Super Cell Bowl Champions have all been MLS or MLT teams from NAACLS-accredited programs and have never had a combination of MLT and MLS students on one team, according to ASCP member Aaron Odegard, MS, MLS(ASCP), who organized the winning team. 

Another “first” for the 2024 Cell Bowl was a community outreach component to build awareness of the laboratory profession. Ms. Gill added the community engagement component in the form of a scavenger hunt. Teammates had to go out into the community to seek or create opportunities to share information about careers in the laboratory profession with individuals or groups around campus, the gym, grocery store, or blood drives. The community could “up-vote” their favorite team by donating at least 30 whole blood units per vote at a local blood drive. 

The Cell Bowl is an interactive competition between medical laboratory science programs nationwide that culminates in the Super Cell Bowl for the Varsity league and the Second Chance Showdown for the Junior Varsity league. It tests the scientific knowledge of MLT and MLS students with team competitions that enhance their knowledge of blood cell morphology and build their professional networks. It also helps prepare them for the ASCP Board of Certification exams. 

ASCP’s Council of Laboratory Professionals has been supportive of the Cell Bowl since it began, with many of its members assisting in the planning and also promoting it on social media. 

“I am very excited about where this cell bowl competition is headed,” says Ms. Gill, a tenured professor and coordinator of the MLT program at the College of Southern Maryland, in Hughesville, MD. “I am excited to have more community involvement. Overall, the Cell Bowl emphasizes what the laboratory profession does, it highlights the medical laboratory education programs, and it raises awareness of the important work of the medical laboratory as part of the healthcare team.” 

Mr. Odegard, a laboratory quality coordinator at Baptist Health Jacksonville, in Jacksonville, FL, is delighted that the team he put together took first place. Throughout the six weeks of competition, his executive laboratory director, Gwendolyn Robles, and other leaders from departments across his health system frequently inquired about how the team was performing. Even the health system’s president, Ms. Nicole Thomas, offered her congratulations after the team won.  

Overall, “The Cell Bowl helped to create a strong sense of community for our team in the clinical setting. It’s fun and helps prepare the participants for the ASCP Board of Certification exams. Lastly, it raises the visibility of the laboratory profession throughout the health system and the surrounding community,” says Mr. Odegard. 

NAACLS-accredited MLT and MLS programs and clinical sites who host these programs’ students can learn more about the Cell Bowl and sign up at the new Medical Lab Lady Gill website. 

ASCP has been selected as a winner of the 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant, which will accelerate the Society’s mission of using cloud technology in an innovative way. The grant, awarded to nonprofit organizations who are using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, will help ASCP build a data lake and enhance its analytics capabilities to strengthen data governance, generate actionable insights, and support advanced analytics. 

By increasing the visibility and accessibility of its data, ASCP aims to accelerate decision-making processes that will improve patient care worldwide. 

ASCP was named a winner in the Momentum to Modernize category, which recognizes foundational technology projects. ASCP will receive up to $50,000 in unrestricted funding, up to $30,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, and project implementation support. Proposals were judged on several factors including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and milestones.  

“Effective data governance is not just about compliance — it’s about creating a foundation for trust. By securing our data, standardizing practices, and enhancing quality, we empower our team members to make informed decisions that drive better outcomes for the organization, our partners, and patients alike,” says Dr. Ali Brown, Chief Medical Officer for ASCP. 

“In today’s data-driven world, actionable insights are the cornerstone of innovation. By leveraging advanced analytics, we can uncover trends and deliver actionable insights that will optimize laboratory operations,” says Dr. Sachin Gupta, Scientific Director of ASCP’s Center for Quality and Patient Safety. 

The AWS IMAGINE Grant will help expand two ASCP initiatives: 

Currently, data resides in four separate legacy systems (older systems still in use even though newer alternatives are available), and a cross-platform analysis is cumbersome, manual, and time-consuming. On-demand, near-time assembled 360-views are necessary to meet the needs of our business/organization. The process ASCP envisions will ensure secure and consistent consumption from legacy platform feeds and transform it into a 360-view analysis via the data lake. 

NPQR (National Pathology Quality Registry) is a quality and benchmarking platform that promotes best practices in laboratory medicine and ensures excellence in patient care, providing customers access to aggregated and comparative insights (laboratory operations, test utilization, and patient results). Pathologists, laboratory professionals and administrative laboratory leaders understand that patient care is improved by leveraging benchmarking and quality performance measures. The challenge is to scale it up, and capacity is needed to ingest and absorb data from newly onboarded laboratories with efficiency. Innovative solutions will help streamline the processes for data ingestion, data transformation, and analysis of data. 

“With the AWS Momentum to Modernize Award, we’ll be able to build a data lake — storing vast amounts of information in a secure, unified, and scalable platform that transforms raw data into actionable insights — this is necessary to enable advanced analytics,” says Dr. Brown. 

The ASCP Chapters and Ambassador programs are reaping the benefits of “cross pollination” that is helping strengthen each. The chapters can encourage their members to sign up as Ambassadors, and the Ambassadors program can encourage their volunteers to join the local ASCP chapters in their area. The end result is the boost of visibility of the laboratory profession across the nation. 

“When you are doing outreach into the community (as an Ambassador, for example), you are doing outreach at a local level,” says Kerwin Kolheffer. MS, PA(ASCP)CM, a longtime ASCP Career Ambassador. “The chapters are a great resource for providing members to serve as Ambassadors who can speak about the medical laboratory profession. Similarly, the Ambassador program has the opportunity to bring new members into the chapters.” 

The key is to engage ASCP members as volunteers. Mr. Kolheffer chaired the Ambassador subcommittee of the ASCP Council of Laboratory Professionals last year, so he is very familiar with a variety of ASCP career outreach activities, including NextPo-to-Go. 

“The idea for NextPo-to-Go came about later at a retreat of the Council of Laboratory Professionals," he explains. "NextPo-to-Go is a digital toolkit which includes online training sessions where we give volunteers the tools they need to set up NextPo at their laboratory or location.” 

As a result of ASCP's various career outreach efforts, these initiatives are gaining traction in communities across the nation. And the synergy between the ASCP Chapters and Ambassadors programs is largely responsible for that. 

Mr. Kolheffer finds tremendous satisfaction in serving as a Career Ambassador. “For me, the best part is seeing people learn something they did not know before the session. It is always a bit surprising that so many people have no idea about the number of people who comprise the laboratory team,” he says.  

To get involved in the Ambassadors program, click here.To learn about joining an ASCP chapter in your area, click here.  

World Cancer Day will be held on February 4. Organized by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), World Cancer Day 2025 has chosen the theme United by Unique, emphasizing the importance of a people-centered approach to cancer care. This approach represents a fundamental shift in how health and cancer services are designed and delivered, placing individuals, families, and communities at the heart of the health systems. 

The ASCP Patient Champions program also embraces a patient-centered approach to care. The Patient Champions program educates patients about their diagnostic test results so that they can better advocate for their own care.   

“ASCP Patient Champions share what they’ve learned to empower patients to do the same. Empowered patients are essential to create optimal health care worldwide,” says Deedee O’Brien, co-chair of the ASCP Patient Champions Steering Committee.  

As an example, this is the first year that the ASCP Patient Champions Steering Committee has realigned its board to have both an ASCP pathologist and a Patient Champion serve together as co-chairs of its steering committee. Ms. O’Brien, who has long been involved in the Patient Champion program, is the first layperson to serve as a co-chair. 

Jeff Myers, MD, MASCP, immediate past chair of the steering committee, explains, “We are always looking for ways to work directly with our Patient Champions, not only to elevate their lived experiences in ways that inform the work we do in our laboratories, but also to more effectively tap into their own ideas and insights for innovations likely to impact patient-centered care.” 

Joseph J. Maleszewski, MD, FASCP, who currently co-chairs the steering committee with Ms. O’Brien, adds, “Joint physician-patient leadership is the most outward reflection of the spirit of this committee. Increasingly, patients are being empowered with their own data and the desire to interact with and understand those who are helping that data is likewise growing. Pathologists must embrace this new paradigm and find ways of meeting the new needs of our patients. Partnerships between pathologists and patients are critical to advocacy, advancement, and ultimately better medicine.” 

Ms. O’Brien’s experiences as the final caregiver for her mother and her husband until they passed away, as primary caregiver for her current partner, Bob, who is paralyzed with transverse myelitis, and dealing with her own cancer diagnosis, have taught her the importance of education, gathering second opinions, seeking different opinions, and advocating for loved ones.  

Aisha Mohamed, MD, was 10 when her family embarked on an experience that fueled her interest in global health. Dr. Mohamed, now a second-year pathology resident at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was recently awarded an ASCP Trainee Global Health Fellowship to spend a month-long rotation at a hospital in Moshi, Tanzania, to support an existing research project on prostate cancer. This visit will occur in addition to virtual support for program implementation. 

In her application for the fellowship, she recounted her experience as a child when her parents sat Dr. Mohamed and her sister down just before the winter holiday began, and informed them they would be going to Kenya to visit family. “I was thrilled. What was supposed to be a vacation ended up being four years in my father’s hometown of Nairobi,” she recalls. 

She attended school in Nairobi, learned the local language, and really loved her science classes. However, when her sister became gravely ill and was taken to the hospital, Aisha became aware that some families could not afford care at the hospitals as her family could. Those families either had to forego medical care or visit local free clinics. 

She was so moved by this experience that when she began medical school years later, she joined the student-run free healthcare clinic and became involved in community healthcare initiatives. 

The ASCP fellowship will enable her to further her passion to improve global health. In Moshi, she will work alongside Dr. Alex Mremi, a pathologist at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), on a research project involving prostate screening of men in Northern Tanzania. 

“Dr. Mremi and his colleagues have screened 6,205 men for prostate cancer. While 572 underwent biopsies after elevated PSA levels, only 172 were diagnosed with cancer, highlighting the need for follow-up with men who had had normal biopsy results,” she explains. In addition to supporting the pathology aims of the research project, Dr. Mohamed, as an ASCP resident member, will work with Dr. Mremi to support and collaborate with KCMC’s pathology training programs and participate in review of interesting clinical cases and virtual tumor boards via KCMC’s telepathology program, supported by ASCP. 

ASCP is proud to support pathology residents such as Dr. Mohamed as they expand their training and skillsets to support global pathology efforts. 

“By working with Dr. Mremi at KCMC, Dr. Mohamed will not only gain invaluable, hands-on experience, but will also help enhance diagnostic services that are critical to patient care,” says Ken Landgraf, MSc, Executive Director of the ASCP Center for Global Health.    

ASCP Comments on USPSTF Draft Recommendations on Cervical Cancer Screening 

The USPSTF’s draft recommendations for cervical cancer screening mark a significant milestone for women’s health by ensuring access to preventive care. While ASCP and its members actively supported the draft language, submitting hundreds of comments, ASCP raised concerns about language around self-collected specimens in our organizational comment letter. Read more. 

Fixing Medicare Payment: Make it a Priority for Congress 

Pathology and clinical laboratory are once again facing destabilizing payment rates and reimbursement, which impacts every aspect of pathology and clinical laboratory operations, and threatens staffing, training, and patient access to vital services. ASCP urges all members and credential holders to advocate for Medicare payment reform by using the ASCP eAdvocacy Center to send Congress a clear message to fix payment rates now. Read more.  

CMS’s CLIA Rule Now Fully in Effect 

The updated CLIA regulations took full effect in late 2024, introducing increased fees,  updated histocompatibility requirements, and more. ASCP and the ASCP Board of Certification played a pivotal role in shaping the rule, influencing CMS to adopt critical changes, such as ensuring high complexity testing requires degrees with a strong academic science foundation and excluding nursing degrees from eligibility. Read more.  

New Healthcare Policymakers for 2025: President-elect Trump’s Nominees and Congressional Leadership 

As the Trump administration prepares to take office, President-elect Trump has nominated individuals and congressional leaders to help enact his policy priorities. Read more.  

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee: Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA) has been picked to chair the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will be ranking member. The incoming chair and ranking member for the committee’s health subcommittee has not yet been finalized. 

Finance Committee: Chairing the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, will be Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID). Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) will serve as the committee’s Ranking Member. The incoming chair and ranking member for the committee’s health subcommittee has not yet been finalized. 

President Trump has scores of additional nominees to fill the hundreds of positions requiring Seante approval. ASCP will report on those that impact our field. 

In a major victory for women’s health and access to preventive care, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has maintained “Grade A” designations for the following cervical cancer screening recommendations in their recently released draft: 

• The USPSTF recommends screening for cervical cancer every three years with cervical cytology alone in women ages 21 to 29 years and then every five years with clinician- or patient-collected high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) primary screening in women ages 30 to 65 years. 

• As an alternative to HPV primary screening for women ages 30 to 65 years, the USPSTF recommends continued screening every three years with cervical cytology alone or screening every five years with high-risk HPV testing in combination with cytology (cotesting).  

These draft recommendations represent an important milestone for women’s health, as USPSTF recommendations directly impact access to preventative care and coverage for preventive care. As a patient-centric organization, ASCP encouraged our members to contact the USPSTF to thank them for their important work on this issue, and to urge finalization of the draft recommendations. However, in our organizational comments – and in agreement with comments from the CETC (Cytopathology Education and Training Consortium, comprised of ASCP, CAP, ASC, the American Society for Cytotechnology, and the Papanicolaou Society of Cytopathology) – ASCP expressed concerns regarding some of the draft language, specifically: self-collected specimens and physician-collected specimens should not be considered equivalent, and the draft recommendations should make a prominent statement that the tests should be FDA-approved for these specific indications, so this requirement is made clear to all ordering clinicians and testing laboratories. 

As of the comment deadline (January 13, 2025), ASCP has recorded thousands of interactions with our microsite, resulting in hundreds of comment forms sent to the USPSTF from our action center. We are pleased with our members’ engagement on this important issue and will update the membership when the draft recommendations are finalized.  

On December 28, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) final rule updating the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments regulations went fully into effect. The final rule increased CLIA’s fees, changed provisions concerning alternative sanctions, amended histocompatibility requirements, and (most importantly) adopted new laboratory testing personnel requirements.  

ASCP’s and the ASCP Board of Certification’s (ASCP BOC) diligent lobbying on the rule was instrumental in shaping the final outcome of the rule, as 99 percent of the 20,574 comments received by CMS came from ASCP and its members, credential holders and others. As part of its lobbying campaign, ASCP also rallied the laboratory and medical community to ensure that certain personnel changes, such as those concerning the degree and training requirements for high complexity testing, were adopted in the final rule. ASCP and the ASCP BOC worked with key stakeholders, such as the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, and American Clinical Laboratory Association to press for essential changes to the proposed rule.  

ASCP and the ASCP BOC urged that the degrees acceptable for high complexity testing should include a solid foundation of the academic sciences critical to laboratory testing. As a result, CMS rescinded its proposal to accept bachelor’s degrees in nursing as qualifying degrees. CMS adopted other ASCP/ASCP BOC recommendations, including: (1) establishing a degree equivalency requirement, (2) eliminating physical science as a recognized degree for high complexity testing, (3) clarifying training and experience requirements, (4) adopting updated degree nomenclature for medical laboratory science, and (5) updating the CLIA high complexity personnel requirements for individuals completing a military laboratory training program. ASCP’s and the ASCP BOC’s lobbying efforts provided a solid victory for quality patient care. 

While much of the final rule went into effect 30 days after the rule’s December 28, 2023, publication, CMS delayed implementation of the histocompatibility and personnel provisions of the final rule to ensure that clinical laboratories and laboratory accreditation organizations had sufficient time to comply with the new requirements. These provisions are now in effect. As a result, the rule’s new degree requirements are in full force. To ensure that its members are aware of the important changes, ASCP provided an analysis of the key policies we urged CMS to adopt. This analysis is available here. 

Last year, Congress failed to fix flaws in how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) pays for services reimbursed by the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). As a result, the new year starts with a 2.8 percent cut in payment rates for pathology services. However, when inflation is considered, the reduction in payment for this year is more like 5.2 percent. 

Reforming how Medicare pays for pathology as well as clinical laboratory services should be priorities for this year’s Congress. 

2025 marks the fifth straight year that CMS has proposed cutting payment rates for pathology and other physician services. Moreover, because Congress hasn’t approved legislation permanently shielding the Medical Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, both of these fee schedules are suffering from destabilizing payment rates. Since 2001, PFS payment rates have fallen more than 26 percent while payment rates for clinical laboratory services have been cut or frozen in 18 of the previous 25 years.  

Poor reimbursement rates impact all pathology practices and clinical laboratories, impacting everything from staffing and training to what services patients can access. These cuts are not sustainable, and it is crucial that we send Congress the message that it must fix Medicare payment rates as soon as possible. 

ASCP is working closely with our advocacy partners to address these issues—including the American Medical Association and the American Clinical Laboratory Association to address CLFS issues. However, for these efforts to succeed, we need help from ASCP’s membership.  

ASCP has released an Action Alert asking its members to urge Congress to fix Medicare payment rates. We need ALL ASCP members, credential holders, and others, including your colleagues, to use the ASCP eAdvocacy Center to send Congress a message to Fix Medicare Payment Rates Now  (click here). ASCP asks that you take five minutes to urge Congress to ensure that clinical laboratories and pathology practices can continue to provide outstanding patient care services.