Shiel Medical Laboratory

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is planning on an experiment to be conducted in two metropolitan regions. One demo region will initiate this year, and one in 2008. It will require that Laboratories (excluding hospitals and physician office labs) do a blind bid for testing services in order to be reimbursed by Medicare. Help us prevent this from becoming a national program

WHY THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA FOR PATIENTS OR PHYSICIAN PRACTICES

Your choice of Labs will be Limited.

Not all labs will be awarded the contract. The likely survivors will be the large national labs. Regional providers like Shiel Medical Laboratory, that emphasize greater service and flexibility, may be out! If Shiel is not one of the winning bidders we may be forced to discontinue our operations. 300 New York area employees will be out of work. Hundreds of quality labs across the country will also be excluded. You will have to select from a short list of labs of the Governments choosing.

Not all Communities and Patients will have easy access to Quality Laboratory Testing.

Nursing homes are exclusively serviced by small and medium sized labs. The two large national labs have made a clear decision that Nursing Home business “is not profitable enough” due to high labor costs and service requirements. They do not have “any” Nursing Home clients.
Labs like Shiel service the needs of economically depressed areas, and market segments that have specific needs due to cultural or religious guidelines. Labs like Shiel do not discriminate. We provide equal service to high Medicaid and Medicaid HMO populations. We have blood drawing stations that have Sunday hours in communities that have restrictions on Saturday.

This Will Not Save Taxpayers Money.

Over 70 % of all medical decisions are derived from the results that laboratories like Shiel reliably deliver, yet only 1.6 % of all Medicare Part B spending is for laboratory testing. This is not where Medicare should be focusing their cost reduction efforts. Awarding the Medicare contracts to mostly the mega-labs puts those labs in a powerful position. They will low ball the competitive bidding process to win the bid, drive hundreds of labs out of business, and then over time drive the price back up.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PREVENT LABORATORY MEDICARE COMPETITIVE BIDDING

Sign the Petitions that we have in all of our Patient Service Centers, or that our representatives bring to your office.

Write and Call your local congressional office and ask them to Repeal the portion of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) that relates to Laboratory Competitive Bidding.

Write and Call your Senators and ask them to Repeal the portion of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) that relates to Laboratory Competitive Bidding.

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER:
Phone: (202) 224-6542 or (212) 486-4430
Fax: (212) 486-7693
WEB: http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm

757 Third Avenue
Suite 17-02
New York, NY 10017

SENATOR HILARY CLINTON:
Phone: (202) 224-4451
Fax: (202) 228-0282
WEB: http://clinton.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm?subj=issue

United States Senate
476 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510