Under the partnership, Seattle Children’s and Mayo will share information with one another to prevent physicians from using shotgun approaches — such as ordering multiple tests at once when only one is actually medically necessary — to diagnose patients.
Shrinking the number of unnecessary laboratory tests will also shrink costs and the likelihood of errors, according to the report. One area the partnership aims to make progress is in cutting down on the frequency and cost of superfluous genetic testing.
Don Flott, Mayo Medical Laboratories’ director of utilization management, told the Puget Sound Business Journal that reducing unnecessary testing may cut about 10 percent of a provider’s costs.
Mayo Medical Laboratories is a global reference laboratory operating within Mayo Clinic’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.
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