2015, Cilt 13, Sayı 1, Sayfa(lar) 035-042 |
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Economics in health care: what should be the new policies of laboratories |
Serap Çuhadar1, Mehmet Köseoğlu2 |
1İzmir Katip Çelebi Üniversitesi Atatürk Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Tıbbi Biyokimya, İzmir, Türkiye 2Giresun Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Tıbbi Biyokimya Anabilim Dalı, Giresun, Türkiye |
Keywords: Evidence based medicine; health policy; laboratory diagnosis |
With the advances in technologies over the last 30 years, laboratories underwent major transformations
and more than 70% of medical diagnosis is based on laboratory test information. However, the aging
population, increasing health care demands make the global costs of health a real challenge for all
societies. To face the economic crisis, upcoming policies of the goverments will be the pressure to
reduce the health care costs inevitably thus will change the future of the laboratories. As a new policy
authories will limit the function of the hospital laboratories with a narrow test menu and will outsource
to the mega laboratories. At this point, laboratory professionals should create added value for clinical
services by providing evidence based consultative support to physicians both at the pre-preanalytical
phase before test selection, and both at the post-post analytical phase of the testing process to asist
physicians in reviewing the results. In this respect there is a need for subspecialization in certain areas of clinical chemistry. Training programs for the next generation laboratory professionals have to be
revised accordingly. In this article we will review the changing structures of the laboratories including
the problems endangering the laboratories, the new role of the laboratory professionals to overcome
these problems.
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