PLUGS Podcast
The PLUGS Podcast aims to empower healthcare providers, clinical laboratories, insurance plans, and patients by enhancing lab stewardship. Laboratory stewardship has five key improvement goals: 1) enhanced access to testing, 2) appropriate and accurate test ordering, 3) timely retrieval of test results, 4) correct result interpretation, and 5) financial alignment between patients, labs and payers. Financial alignment means that patients are protected from financial toxicity, labs are paid fairly, and insurance companies do not pay for wasteful test practices.
Through insightful discussions, expert guidance, and valuable resources, the PLUGS Podcast is dedicated to supporting all stakeholders in navigating the complexities of clinical lab stewardship, ultimately promoting both better patient outcomes and financial security.
PLUGS Podcast
14 years of PLUGS: Lessons, Relationships, and Progress
In this holiday edition of the PLUGS podcast, Drs. Jane Dickerson, Mike Astion and
Geoff Baird reflect on the history and learnings from PLUGS, as well as from the
stewardship practices at the University of Washington, Seattle Childrens and PLUGS members around the country. We also give PLUGS its first official mascot, and draw analogies between PLUGS, TV Shows and Sports. Enjoy and thanks for being part of the story.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify key strategies for building interdisciplinary relationships to support laboratory stewardship programs within health systems.
2. Explain how clinical decision support (CDS) systems can improve lab test ordering, naming one challenge in implementing them, and describing one potential future improvement in CDS that involves AI.
3. Name two accomplishments of PLUGS that have had a national impact.
4. Define why it is important to have specific CPT coding to support laboratory
stewardship, using celiac testing as an example.
PLUGS Website:
https://www.schplugs.org/
MTS Website
https://medtraining.org/