The Augusta Chronicle — April 29, 2021
Testing laboratories that have been shouldering the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic are also now seeing patients come back for other conditions and finding neglect has many worse off, a group representing pathologists said Wednesday. After weathering shortages and increased costs due to the pandemic, those practices could also be hurt by a looming cut from Medicare, particularly in underserved rural areas, officials said.
The College of American Pathologists held a webinar Wednesday to talk about the pandemic and its impact on labs around the world and also what the future might hold for them. The group was pleased to see funding for tests included in the American Rescue Plan, including $800 million to address supply chain shortages and $650 million for COVID-19 testing in schools, said Dr. Jonathan Myles of the Cleveland Clinic.
It is also important that $1.7 billion was set aside for sequencing variants to the SARS CoV2 virus, not only to know what is circulating in the community but "to make sure our laboratory tests can detect these variants," he said.
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