CAPcasts

In a laboratory setting with fast-paced changes and heavy demands on staff, day-to-day communication across departments is challenging, yet paramount to resource sharing and real-time problem solving. To improve communication across departments, the laboratory at Seattle Children’s Hospital has been using daily huddles for several years, explains Dr. Joe Rutledge in this CAPcast. Daily huddles have been valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dr. Rutledge, ensuring efficient communication among the laboratory staff and across the Seattle Children’s enterprise. Until his recent retirement, Dr. Rutledge was a pediatric pathologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Pathologists need to be aware of upcoming Medicare cuts due to changes to evaluation and management payment and coding, which were finalized in November 2019, explains Dr. Jonathan Myles in this CAPcast.

In this interview, Dr. Myles will provide an overview of the current state of the efforts to prevent Medicare cuts to pathologists due to changes to evaluation and management (E/M) payment and coding, which take effect in January 2021. Dr. Myles is a member of the CAP Board of Governors and serves as the chair of the Council on Government and Professional Affairs.

For more information on this issue, please visit Advocacy's Payments for Pathology Services section of CAP.org: https://capatholo.gy/2Yc16xP.

In early 2020, the CAP introduced its first Autopsy Protocol for Adult Decedents, explains Dr. Jody Hooper, Director of Autopsy Service at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Associate Professor of Pathology, in this CAPcast. Dr. Hooper was the chair of the CAP’s Autopsy Committee until recently and was instrumental in creating this protocol.

The protocol is available on CAP.org: https://capatholo.gy/2zvUS2A.

As we move into the next phase of the pandemic, laboratories are ramping up efforts to implement SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing to identify individuals who may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the past.

In this CAPcast, Dr. Daniel Rhoads, Section Head of Microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic and Dr. Elitza Theel, Director of Infectious Disease Serology from Mayo Clinic explain the clinical use of antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 and describe the work of the CAP’s Microbiology and Diagnostic Immunology and Flow Cytometry Committees to develop the new proficiency testing program SARS-CoV-2 Serology (COVS).

The new SARS-CoV-2 Serology PT program is available today (https://capatholo.gy/3d9u4DR). The program code is COVS, and the first shipment is scheduled for June 22, 2020. Visit the COVID-19 page (https://www.cap.org/covid-19) on the CAP’s web site for the latest news and resources, including those for proficiency testing customers and CAP-accredited laboratories. The COVID-19 page offers useful links to helpful tools and resources to clarify rules of compliance as you implement COVID-19 testing in your laboratory.

One investigational treatment being explored for COVID-19 is the use of convalescent plasma or CCP collected from individuals who have recovered from COVID-19. CCP that contains antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is being studied for administration to patients with COVID-19. Use of convalescent plasma has been studied in outbreaks of other respiratory infections, including the 2003 SARS-CoV-1 epidemic, the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, and the 2012 MERS-CoV epidemic.

Although promising, CCP has not yet been shown to be safe and effective as a treatment for COVID-19, explains Dr. Glen Ramsey, Medical Director of the Blood Bank at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and Chair of the CAP Transfusion, Apheresis, and Cellular Therapy Committee. In this CAPcast, Dr. Ramsey provides a basic primer on CCP, as well as explains why it’s important to study the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 convalescent plasma in clinical trials and the blood bank’s role in providing CCP.

Visit CAP.org's COVID-19 site for more updates related to pathologists and laboratory medicine: www.cap.org/covid-19.

Most biorepositories have not traditionally paid attention to the financial aspects of their operations, which has led to problems in the long-term sustainability of some academic, government and commercial biobanking operations, explains Dr. Jim Vaught, editor-in-chief of the journal Biopreservation and Biobanking, in this CAPcast. Dr. Vaught has studied the challenges involved in the economics and sustainability over the past 10 years and has published several papers on these topics. In this CAPcast, Dr. Vaught will discuss why all biorepository directors need to understand the costs of setting up and operating their facilities and how to develop a business strategy.

For more resources related to biobanking and biorepositories, including the CAP’s Biorepository Accreditation Program, please visit CAP.org and search for biorepository.

Emergency assistance programs recently enacted by Congress have created more than $350 billion in financial aid for small businesses during the COVID-19 national emergency and economic downturn. Many of these programs for small businesses, which are defined as those with 500 or fewer employees, are applicable to pathologists and their laboratories. The CAP is urging its members to consider applying for these programs as revenues for services typically billed by pathologists have decreased in recent weeks.

In this CAPcast, Dr. Jonathan Myles, who chairs the CAP’s Council on Government and Professional Affairs, explains how this program can help pathologists keep their practices solvent until the pandemic and national emergency are over.

For more information on government assistance programs applicable to pathology practices, go to the COVID-19 section of CAP.org (https://capatholo.gy/38HjAZh). If you have additional questions about small business assistance or want to provide us with your feedback, email the CAP at [email protected].

In the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19, clinical laboratories have shown an unwavering commitment to the patients they serve by ramping up efforts to deploy COVID-19 testing. The CAP is committed to supporting your efforts and is happy to announce COV2, a new proficiency testing (PT) program for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 by nucleic acid amplification testing. The new PT program’s material is non-infectious and targets gene regions N, E, RdRp, ORF1a, and S.

In this CAPcast, Dr. Bobbi Pritt, Director of the Clinical Parasitology Laboratory and Co-Director of Vector-borne Diseases Laboratory Services at Mayo Clinic, discusses what pathologists and laboratories need to know about COV2. Dr. Pritt is also the chairperson of the CAP’s Microbiology Committee, who was instrumental in designing the recently launched proficiency testing program for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus.

To learn more and order COV2, visit CAP.org: https://capatholo.gy/34FmvRO.

As U.S. laboratories expand their testing capabilities, many pathologists are eager to share lessons learned from their own experiences. In this CAPcast interview, Dr. Richard Scanlan discusses his experiences bringing COVID-19 testing online at his institution, including some lessons learned. Dr. Scanlan is the medical director of the Oregon Health and Sciences University Hospital laboratory in Portland.

For updated information for pathologists and laboratories from the CAP, visit https://capatholo.gy/38HjAZh.

Seattle experienced the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave in the United States. UW Medicine’s Geoffrey Baird, MD, PhD, acting chair of Laboratory Medicine was at the forefront, confronting significant challenges related to diagnosing patients with this virus. In this CAPcast, Dr. Baird discusses lessons learned from testing and personnel challenges when ramping up testing capacity. In addition, Dr. Suzanne Dintzis, Associate Professor of Pathology at UW School of Medicine and current president of the Washington State Society of Pathologists, weighs in on UW’s current autopsy protocols.

Visit CAP.org for the latest CAP information on COVID-19: https://capatholo.gy/38HjAZh.