Creating more value from hospital labs: Partnership models for the modern area

American health systems — and the clinical laboratories they run — have for years experienced financial, labour, data and other pressures as a result of internal and external factors such as decreases in reimbursements, consolidation and policy changes. While these challenges existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic has introduced added volatility in lab staffing, supply chains and profitability while building new inroads into remote lab administration. Amid these trends, many hospitals are shifting their lab management strategy towards partnership models and stewardship programmes that optimise resources, cut waste and promote business and patient outcomes. Buoyed by annual savings of up to 15 per cent and improvements in guideline-aligned lab formularies, such models scale from independently managed operations to shared ownership structures, with many options in between. This paper explores these emerging structures and looks at how health systems can identify the right model — if any — for them to create more value from lab operations while overcoming the many strains of the modern healthcare environment.