Nearly 50 years into the formal use in U.S. medicine, Locum Tenens (Latin for “to hold the place of”) has helped extend access to care in rural and underserved areas for decades.
Intended as a temporary solution to fill provider gaps, the continued growth and sprawl of the US population, in combination with a decrease in the number of medical professionals created an ideal environment for the commercialization of the model through private staffing agencies and expanded use to include urban hospitals, specialty care and academic institutions. Addressing all gaps from staffing shortages to physician burnout, family leave and general sabbaticals, Locum Tenens staffing firms evolved to take on the administrative challenges of credentialing, malpractice coverage and travel and housing logistics expanding the use, as well as the cost of this model.
For all of the benefits realized, Locum Tenens limitations including consistency in performance, continuity of care, constant need for credentialing, limited use terms (60-days) and an ever increasing cost model are challenging even the most diligently prepared budgets of hospitals and groups. To realize the benefits and address the concerns of the pathology Locum Tenens model a digital evolution can be embraced. Proven digital technologies can extend pathology expertise throughout the US while driving improved cost management and service utilization. While implementing digital pathology can be expensive, time consuming and disruptive without additional reimbursement considerations, using it to address Locum Tenens needs and costs is a near perfect use case.
Welcome to Diagnexia, leading the charge to democratize access to sub-specialty pathology, globally, through the use of technology and a business model that unlocks access to care, appropriate utilization and cost controls in a seamless integrated model.
Building a consortium of world-renowned sub-specialty pathologists Diagnexia enables access to their expertise through the digitization of histopathology slides either through the on-site digitization or shipping of slides to one of their global scanning laboratories. Diagnexia’s team of 70+ engineers have created an integrated platform and introduced AI tools to ensure slide quality, expert case assignment and diagnostic quality assurance. The Diagnexia platform empowers its experts to remotely move through cases quickly and with trusted accuracy and precision, driving down the time between biopsy and diagnosis, and accelerating advancement towards care plans and treatments.
How does Diagnexia differ from Locums?
What are the real world implications of the expense difference in a one-week comparison of Locums vs. Diagnexia?
Example:
- Locums pathologists average at least $3k/day; $15k/week
- Locums may read 25 cases per day; ~65 CPTs (e.g. GI @ 2.6CPTs/Case)
- Diagnexia services can represent a savings of 25% or more for the same work
Even outside of Locums, most pathology practice needs are for a fractional pathologists
- When struggling to hire, fractional pathology with Diagnexia makes sense
- For needs passing 75-80 CPTs daily, a pathologist hire makes sense
- For sub-specialists 100 CPTs per day is a sensible threshold
- For all else, Diagnexia remote expert pathologists make the most financial sense
Diagnexia offers a compelling alternative to locums for pathology groups looking to maintain competitive turn-around times, achieve service level goals and offer sub-specialty expertise.
Many value based contracts require achieving service level goals, Diagnexia offers a hedge against the risk of losing business and performance based contracts due to a failure to achieve promised metrics.
Staffed with sub-specialty pathology experts, Diagnexia confidently delivers trusted primary diagnoses so much so, that use of its consultations services can help drive down needless case work ups. Our clients can be connected to one or several of our network sub-specialty pathologists to meet their needs.
Anatomic pathology has faced years of challenges between reduced pathology resources, increased operational costs, and seemingly never ending cuts to reimbursement. Those factors make it difficult for most practices to justify the investment in cost and time of implementing digital pathology when it provides no reimbursement incentives. This has been a contributing factor to the slow adoption of digital pathology in the US.
Diagnexia has laid the groundwork for the smart, practical use of digital pathology as an extension of practice capabilities and resources. Supporting practices throughout the US, Diagnexia has built a compelling network and platform allowing it to perform at levels on par with some of the best academic centers in the world. Establishing a relationship with Diagnexia before you ‘need to’ due to a loss of personnel can help ensure you have the professional services capacity your referring physicians, payors and patients expect to deliver fast, high quality and trusted diagnoses. Please reach out to Diagnexia today and ensure you are ready to responsibly meet the challenges of tomorrow.
