What happened to Labs??

I have been combing through this forum. It used to be busting with lab offers and new services. It is bacially dead now, nothing but labs going under, investigations (yikes!), and lawsuits. Can someone explain what caused the destruction of such a booming field? Was it managed care through Obamacare? 25 dollar commission for tox tests when the comission used to be in the 100s to over a thousand. Whatt he hell happened?

 

You said it at the end of your post. When labs paid reps $100's for specimens, they had to be collecting insane amounts from insurers, medicare and medicaid. The insurers and government payers looked and said what the f**k is going on. They audited most labs, found out kickbacks were being made and are shutting it down now. Greed took over! If all the labs had just billed $150-$200 per drug screen and not $1000-$2000 everyone would have still been getting paid. But now, $150-$200 is still too much for the payers. They want all the money that was stolen from them back. The crooked labs and crooked reps are what happened. The same thing is going to happen with PGX and Genetics. The tests cost too much for the system to handle. We did this to ourselves!

 

^ pretty much.

Overbilling the payers for years, milking the system. Finding and exploiting any and every loophole possible to continue to run tests and bill absurd amounts for dissected ICD9/10 code. Paying reps on percentages of billing, giving kickbacks to doctors and staff for directing samples to a reps lab. Running samples through hospitals billing systems that the hospitals did not test (ie finding financially unstable rural hospitals and offering them a cut of outrageous Blue Cross/Medicare overbilling to use their special coding for max returns). Reps acting as "recruiters" finding any tox/pgx/genetics/allergy low-hanging reps and pooling them pyramid-scheme style to increase samples. Everyone got a cut. It was pretty f**ked up. Went on for quite a few years.

Etc etc etc. Greed took it all down. A lot of guys made a ton of cash, some didn't see the big picture and worked for a paycheck and missed out. Some went to jail. In the end it was all about greed. And it's over. At least the "quick-buck" part. The shady labs are disappearing, and now reps have to actually work.

Have fun with that.

 

sad part is, ive gone to new clients to try to get their business and some have asked what I can give them back. Thats when I walk out. Its not worth their business to risk giving something.

It makes it so hard for the labs that do not bill outrageous amounts, that do not offer kickbacks and have W2 sales reps. Its extremely hard to pull clients in, simply because for years these shady people were doing some bad stuff.

Hopefully with them all getting out, and the bad pop up labs going down, things will settle out. Reimbursement will never recover.

 

That's the point. Now reps actually have to sell. And there are hundreds or even thousands of terrible "sales reps" out there in this space that haven't the first clue how to actually build relationships and sell.

 

This is all completely spot on. Many so called "sales" people relied on essentially kickbacks. That's not selling. Good news is the system is flushing these garbage reps out. You will see b2b guys still come to lab biz because they can make 150-200 which is still better than most b2b sales gigs. They know how to sell and will be grateful for the job. Good riddance scumbags.

 

Completely wrong. Most of these lab tests are deemed medically unnecessary. Labs are being forced to pay money back. Managed care is forcing providers to use certain big labs. It is over for this business. Labs are shutting down daily. I give it less than year before most of these labs on this forum are shut down.

 

For tox and specialty lab yeah. But full reference labs with contracts will survive and probably grow because the bottom feeders will be gone

 

Are you kidding? What happened to labs?
The rug was pulled out from their feet and reimbursements became so low they had no money for supplies to work. And the biggest thing is the principals robbed the money and the sales force ran with their worthless accounts but no one wanted them especially the big labs.

 

Greed! Labs were making 75% profits on the drug testing. That is insane! Reimbursements did not go too low. They can go even lower. If a company can't make money on a $100 total for screen and confirmation they need to get out of the business. And reps should only make 8-10% commission on that $100! Everyone that came into this business wanted easy money. The lab business is tough and profits are in the 20-25% range are good. Totally distorted due to GREEEEEEEED!

 

Most of you posting in this thread have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Get out while you still can. United is auditing unbundled billing codes and wants it money back for "overbilling". Same crap these insurance companies pulled on the compounding pharmacies. This health care field is so banged up. The good ole days are officially over!

 

Completely agree!