Legislation to increase transparency and accountability in Medicare’s Local Coverage Determinations is currently pending before Congress. The legislation, which is championed by the CAP and pathologists around the country, continues to gain momentum in both the House and Senate with the total of 44 representatives and 15 senators currently sponsoring the bill.

Reforms are necessary to ensure that independent, medical and scientific evidence is not used selectively when developing Local Coverage Determinations, which are also known as LCDs. The CAP helps ensure that all pathologists are appropriately reimbursed for medically reasonable and necessary services provided to Medicare patients.

In this CAPcast, Dr. Gail Vance will discuss this LCD issue, as well as why and how she is advocating for pathologists.

An international consortium of cytopathologists, surgical pathologists, and urologists known as the Paris System Working Group has published a standardized system for urine cytology reporting. This new system was conceived at the 18th International Congress of Cytology in Paris in May 2013. In this CAPcast, consortium member Dr. Daniel Kurtycz and co-editor of the atlas discusses what pathologists need to know about this new reporting system, known as the Paris System.

At the annual Policy Meeting, government leaders and policy experts discuss how major policy and regulatory challenges impact pathologists. In addition, CAP members meet with their representatives and senators in Congress. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Jared Abbott discusses what he gets out of attending the meeting each year and his experience engaging in advocacy. The 2018 Policy Meeting will be held April 30-May 2 in Washington, DC, learn more: http://capatholo.gy/2si9z4T.

It’s critical for pathologists to maintain their clinical pathology expertise, according to Dr. Jon Heusel, Director of Clinical and Translational Genomics and Chief Medical Officer of Genomics and Pathology Services at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Heusel will talk about why maintaining expertise in clinical pathology is so important, and how a program from the CAP can help ALL pathologists do just that.

HistoQIP is a quality assurance program for histopathology, jointly sponsored by the National Society for Histotechnology and the College of American Pathologists. The primary focus of this program is to improve the quality of histologic preparations routinely performed in the histology laboratory through education.

In this CAPcast from the College of American Pathologists, pathologist Dr. Matthew Carr of Western Michigan Pathology Associates and ASCP certified histotechnologist Sue Lewis discuss how the program works and how it can help pathologists, laboratory managers and their staff members improve the quality of their histology laboratory operations. For more information, visit https://nsh.org/content/all-about-histoqip.

Because medical training is lacking in financial education, new pathologists are often at a loss when diagnosing their financial health. But the burden of student debt, modest resident salaries, and the societal pressures of ‘‘physician wealth’’ can lead to financial despair, depression, and burnout during training, writes Dr. Anne Mills in an editorial recently published on the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine website. In this CAPcast, Dr. Mills, a pathologist at the University of Virginia, discusses the challenges many young pathologists face in understanding their financial situation and some steps they can take toward financial stability.

The incidence of HPV-related head and neck carcinomas is rising in the United States, with the greatest increase among middle-aged white men. In fact, more than 95% of oral cancers are squamous cell carcinomas, a type that is most closely linked to high-risk HPV. The urgent need to understand HPV's impact on head and neck cancer patients is driving the need for a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline just released by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and available in early online release from the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine (http://capatholo.gy/2AUcwbG). In this CAPcast, Dr. William C. Faquin, a pathologist from Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the significance of these guidelines and how clinicians and pathologists can best implement them. Visit CAP.org for more resources on how pathologists can implement these guidelines: http://capatholo.gy/2BMfPoX.

Many—if not most—pathologists come out of training with little or no confidence in their knowledge about blood banking and transfusion medicine. That’s where Dr. Joe Chaffin—also known as the Blood Bank Guy—comes in. Through his Blood Bank Guy podcasts and videos, Dr. Chaffin is focused on educating pathology residents, practicing pathologists, and laboratorians on the basics and common misconceptions about transfusion medicine, as he explains in the CAPcast.

Pathologists can make a solid case for introducing an emerging technology into their laboratory—even one without a reimbursement code—by creating a business plan, according to Dr. Wendy Wells, the chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dr. Wells spoke about creating such a business plan for ex vivo microscopy earlier this year at CAP17. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Wells will discuss this emerging technology and the important components of a business plan, including establishing financial justification for a technology that is not yet reimbursable. For more on emerging technologies such as in vivo and ex vivo microscopy, visit the CAP IVM Topic Center: http://capatholo.gy/2zDnJzY.

Nearly 40% of physicians say that fragmented or missing information on pathology reports is a barrier to accurately diagnose and characterize cancer. To improve the consistency and reliability of cancer reporting, the CAP and mTuitive have developed the Electronic Forms and Reporting Module, or eFRM for short. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Jason Pettus, a pathologist with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, discusses his experience with eFRM and cancer reporting.