Michel answers Slone Partners’ questions.

1. Given that the laboratory testing industry is so competitive, what word better describes it—exciting or hostile?

This question strikes to the heart of the half-full or half-empty glass metaphor. Individual laboratory executives and pathologists will answer this based on their unique perspective. Some will see healthcare’s ongoing transformation as an unprecedented opportunity to step up and advance the clinical value and financial performance of their laboratory. These people see the half-full glass and expect to it to become fuller over time. For them, these are exciting times.

Others will consider healthcare’s ongoing transformation as a clear threat to the status quo that has contributed to their laboratory’s ongoing success. These individuals consider the ongoing changes to the current healthcare system as disruptive and not likely to end well for their laboratory organization. That’s the half-empty glass, which these people believe is likely to be further drained until it reaches the bottom. For such people, the competitive market for lab testing services is considered “hostile.”

Count me in the group that sees healthcare’s transformation as a tremendous opportunity for all of pathology and laboratory medicine. Only once in history can anyone be alive when knowledge of the human genome is first acquired, then used to improve the quality of human life. We are not only living during that time—but we are directly involved, almost daily, in the process of taking new genetic knowledge and applying it to patient care in ways that advance the health of patients. That has to be exciting for anyone who entered the laboratory medicine profession with the goal of helping patients get healthy and stay healthy.

2. How did you come up with the name “Executive War College”?

Back in the mid-1990s, there was a clear need for a conference or regular meeting that would emphasize the management, operations, and business side of running a clinical laboratory group. Capitated prices were causing lab reimbursement to plummet. HMOs and managed care plans were altering the landscape. Yet, conference terms such as “Symposium” or “Colloquium” imply lengthy study and research—not decisive action. We hit upon the name “Executive War College on Laboratory and Pathology Management.” It was inspired by the famed Army War College and Naval War College of this country, where our nation’s brightest young leaders come to train on how to understand strategy, develop plans, and act decisively. The “Executive War College” thus became the place where pathology and laboratory leaders could come and discuss business strategies, share innovations in laboratory management, and network with their peers.

3. On balance, are the economics of healthcare reform going to be good or bad for medical laboratories?

It will be several more years before the specific consequences of the 2010 health reform bill will become visible. In the meantime, laboratory medicine will benefit from two powerful trends. One is the increased utilization of laboratory testing attributable to baby boomers reaching their sixth decade, along with the increased incidence of chronic disease among the wider population. The second trend is the number of new diagnostic assays—based on new technologies and genetic knowledge—that make it possible for physicians to more accurate diagnose and treat disease. Combined, these two trends point to a bright future for the laboratory testing industry.

4. Speaking of economics, what path took you from an economics degree in college to a prominent position covering the news events in the laboratory testing industry and providing consulting services to laboratories here in the United States and abroad?

Few of us graduate from college and, decades later, end up working in the job or profession we imagined at graduation. My path following college involved executive positions at several Fortune 100 companies. In 1991, a strategic marketing position at a commercial laboratory company marked my first experience in the lab testing industry. Several years later, when this lab company was acquired, I took the opportunity to develop a business intelligence service for pathologists and laboratory executives that would keep them up-to-date on developments in the laboratory marketplace. That was the genesis of The Dark Report in 1995. For the past 15 years, The Dark Report has provided timely analysis of emerging trends and shared the innovations of some of the nation’s best-run clinical laboratories and pathology group practices.

5. What’s the next big news from our laboratory testing industry that’s going to make the daily papers and the TV news?

You are asking me to pull out the crystal ball. That is always a risky proposition, because the future seldom plays out the way experts predict. Also, the daily newspapers and the TV news have a different take on developments in laboratory testing than would be true of most pathologists, clinical laboratory scientists, and other laboratory professionals. From the media’s perspective, I would guess that advances in genetic testing will regularly generate headlines in newspapers and the TV news, for a simple reason. People believe that genetic knowledge will make it possible for them to one day regularly beat cancer and live a healthier life. Thus, news of a new genetic or molecular laboratory test that allows physicians to more accurately diagnose cancer and other diseases will certainly get wide press coverage.

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