Improving the clinical impact of the HealthTrust portfolio
Key takeaways from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) annual meeting in August 2019.
I joined HealthTrust’s Laboratory Advisory Board at the annual meeting of the AACC in Anaheim, California in August. We participated in several days of supplier presentations and searched for new and innovative products to improve the clinical impact of the HealthTrust portfolio.
We met with suppliers offering products and services covering chemistry/immunoassay, hematology and molecular testing, allowing us to assess the technologies from both existing suppliers and competing ones. It helped us to better understand the clinical utility of the products and services on the market today. We wanted to review the latest and greatest offerings of all players on the market, so when the board makes a decision, its members are fully informed.
As part of the event, we challenged ourselves to search through the hundreds of suppliers onsite to each find three new and innovative products that could benefit HealthTrust members and their patients. These recommendations are being considered as potential new categories and/or extensions to existing categories or suppliers.
Here are a couple of notable trends:
- There is a lot of activity around high-sensitive troponin, with about half of manufacturers having released one FDA-approved high-sensitive troponin and the other half not far behind. They were very competitive with each other about who had the most sensitive troponin, but there is also discussion that it can be too sensitive, and you can send people to cath who may not actually need it.
- There is increasing growth in the market of rapid molecular testing that has the potential to offer much quicker diagnosis.
By taking the time to fully understand the abilities of all of these technologies, we can facilitate a financially responsible portfolio of contracted suppliers that offers our members, and ultimately our patients, the best possible access to technology with the greatest clinical impact.
At the time of this writing, Christa Pardue, MBA, MT(AMT), was the Director of Laboratory Services, Clinical Operations at HealthTrust.
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