Laboratory Reps

Discussion in 'Ask Dr. Dave' started by anonymous, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:37 PM.

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  1. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    I am a seasoned Lab rep who recently took a new position with a regional independent lab with a great reputation.

    With a new territory comes new challenges, and I am shocked at the number of providers disallowing lunch access for lab reps. They love to say "we have a lab already", to which I politely reply "well I'd certainly be worried if you didn't!" and proceed to uncover why they aren't allowing me to schedule a lunch.

    My question to you is, all things considered equal (insurance contracts, turnaround, interface w/ EMR, etc), are all full service labs the same in the eyes of the Doctor? When you send a shave biopsy off to your reference lab, does it matter if it's a BC'd dermatopathologist reading the case (that you can talk to directly) or some random MD from a big-box lab that takes an act of God to get on the phone?

    My lab is regional and competes directly with the big box Wall Street labs (Quest, LCA, BRL, Sonic) yet is physician owned. Will the message that "our office is just like your office" resonate with providers whose choices are being eliminated by insurance companies?

    Thanks in advance, love reading your thoughts. I'm sure my doctors appreciate some of your advice I've applied to my day to day.
     

  2. DrDave

    DrDave Member

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    Thanks for your post, and I’m glad you’ve found some helpful info here.

    You obviously know your territory better than I do, but I wonder if part of your trouble comes from the ever-increasing alignments, formal and informal, between physician practices and health systems which rely on labs as a revenue source. In my area, literally all of the physician practices have such alignments with our local hospital/health system except one (which is aligned with another health system outside the county). In my case, lunch with you would not be strictly forbidden, but it would not likely be productive for you and would likely get me some unwanted attention from my employer if they found out. Do you have any sense of whether this is the case in your territory?
     
  3. anonymous

    anonymous Guest