COVER STORIES

This year labs and other providers are getting their first glimpse of how the Affordable Care Act will affect the delivery of care. Chief among several new Medicare initiatives is the Shared Savings Program that recognizes Accountable Care Organizations. According to experts, laboratorians will have to reach out of their comfort zones and be proactive if they want to play a role in this new model of care.

Though clinicians have long-desired systematic newborn screening for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, it was hard to justify without evidence that early treatment would improve outcomes for affected babies. Now, however, promising treatments are on the horizon, and a research team recently developed an evidence-based model for newborn screening for the disease, setting the stage for widespread implementation of newborn screening for the disease.

SERIES ARTICLE

The controversy over using PSA as a screening tool for prostate cancer was recently rekindled when a U.S. government task force recommended that healthy men avoid getting regular tests. Given its limitations, much effort has been focused over the years on alternate biomarkers to supplement, or even replace the PSA test, as a tumor detection tool.

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