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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter October 2, 2023

From volume to value: a watershed moment for the clinical laboratory

  • Rossella Tomaiuolo ORCID logo EMAIL logo and Giuseppe Banfi

Abstract

The clinical laboratory is often evaluated for the volume of testing. However, it is undeniable that laboratory tests affect clinical decision-making and are included in many clinical guidelines, meaning their contribution to determining clinical outcomes. Therefore, the clinical laboratory professional has the task of enhancing laboratory tests by optimizing the request and reporting phase and addressing patient outcomes. This opinion paper, presenting practical examples of managing value-based health care in the clinical laboratory context, underlines the need to shift towards value-based management to optimize outcome-based health care.


Corresponding author: Rossella Tomaiuolo, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, 20132 Milan, Italy; and IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Milan, Italy, E-mail:

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  3. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  4. Competing interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.

  5. Research funding: None declared.

  6. Data availability: Not applicable.

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Received: 2023-08-08
Accepted: 2023-09-25
Published Online: 2023-10-02
Published in Print: 2024-03-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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