In a move expected to improve patient care and save money, New Bedford-based
Southcoast Hospitals Group opened southeastern Massachusetts’ first molecular
diagnostics laboratory last month.
Besides allowing for quicker turnaround time for tests, benefiting patients and allowing doctors to direct and monitor the course of cancer treatment more efficiently, a substantial cost-savings is expected from moving the lab in-house.
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Joyce Faria Brennan, a spokeswoman for the hospital group, said the equipment costs ran under $50,000, which the hospital group should expect to more than make back in shipping costs over the next few years. Every month, Brennan said the three hospitals in the Southcoast group, along with its neighborhood clinics, were generating thousands of pap smears and detection and treatment tests for viral diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C and human papilloma virus.
The laboratory is located at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford. The hospital group also includes Tobey Hospital in Wareham and Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River.
“It’s not a huge investment,” said Brennan. “When it comes right down to it, we’re going to start saving significantly without having to pay for shipping charges,” she said.
Like many other non-teaching hospitals across the country, Southcoast has been transporting tissue and blood samples for years to a distant reference lab, previously sending samples as far away as California for the necessary diagnostics and sometimes waiting more than a week for results.
Dr. David E. Ziemba, chief pathologist and medical director of the laboratories at St. Luke’s and Tobey hospitals, said the only other community-based molecular diagnostics laboratory in Massachusetts is located in the Berkshires. In Rhode Island, Brown University-affiliated Rhode Island Hospital and Miriam Hospital house similar molecular labs where testing is performed for hospitals in the Lifespan network.
Earlier this year, St. Luke’s began performing immunohistochemical antibody testing, which is used to diagnose breast, prostate and colon cancers and also allows for in-depth analysis to determine how well a particular type of treatment is working. Beginning last week, the laboratory’s Polymerase Chain Reaction area opened to patients and is capable of detecting viral diseases.
“It’s cutting-edge technology being brought to the patients in Southcoast’s area,” Ziemba said. “This is a lab that is very, very rare to see in community hospitals.”
In the fall, the hospital will start using “FISH technologies” (Florescent in SITU Hybridization), which identifies abnormalities that can occur in tumors using florescent-tagged DNA. This testing is used in the detection of recurrent bladder cancer and also in monitoring the therapy of breast cancer treatment in women as well as several other types of cancer.
Paula Baptista, technical manager for Southcoast Hospitals Group’s Laboratories, worked with Ziemba for the past two years to push a proposal through for the lab’s creation. Baptista said they were told to work under two edicts – that the lab be staffed with existing employee positions and that any capital investment be done at minimal cost.
They also had to show financial savings that would extend to health care dollars of the future, showing that doctors being able to make quicker decisions on patient care would equal lessened treatment costs down the line. Baptista said the final projections showed a cost reduction of between 30 percent and 40 percent.
“Having that business plan was the whole impetus to get this where we are today,” said Baptista, who has worked at the facility since 1987. “We’re talking very little capital for something which will save money in the long run. … Years ago, no one would have ever thought we could have a molecular lab. But we saved here and saved there and it made sense.”
Ziemba noted that the lab is willing to perform testing for any other physician or hospital to realize an additional revenue stream. “Once you have the basic technology, you can build on those parameters and be prepared to meet the needs of the future,” he said.
Southcoast Health System, a not-for-profit organization, was formed in 1996
from the merger of Massachusetts’ hospitals Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall
River, St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford and Tobey Hospital in Wareham.
