Do diagnostic pathways contribute to the economic improvement of a hospital? Considerations from the perspective of laboratory medicine1)

Diagnostic pathways in the field of laboratory medicine could contribute economically to integrate modern “disease management” from the perspective of healthcare policy into a complex development with limited resources. The objective is to bridge the gap between medical and economic demand. Diagnostic pathways could be an innovative way to optimise processes in medicine with the objective of transparency of costs, results and performance, especially if technical prerequisites for web-based communication (i.e., order entry, digitised laboratory analysed findings) are given. The precondition is that laboratory diagnostics must be appreciated as a core procedure of a hospital. Furthermore, diagnostic pathways provide the opportunity to define processes concerning disease severity and rate of resource usage. The pathways support the physician by finding the probable or medically worthwhile primary and secondary diagnosis for coding the DRG (Diagnoses Related Groups). This results in guaranteeing revenues and an increase in the quality of therapy. The very visualisation of medical decisions by diagnostic pathways results in the reduction of ill-conceived activities and consequently in an improvement of health economics.