If you’ve been following our electronic newsletter, CLPrime (and you may also have noted the change on CLP’s September masthead), you’ll know that the Allied Health family of publications is now part of Anthem Media Group, headquartered in Overland Park, Kan. Our editorial offices will continue to be located in Los Angeles, and our phone numbers remain the same. E-mail addresses have changed, however. You can now contact me at ; Stephen Noonoo, CLP’s associate editor, can be reached at . Also, please continue to send your news releases; the new address for releases is .

Anthem Media Group is a rapidly growing publisher of regional, national, and contract titles, with additional divisions producing high-tech video, interactive media, and specialized marketing assets. (You can learn more at www.thisisamg.com.) All of us at CLP, as well as our colleagues throughout Allied, are pleased and excited to be part of such a thriving enterprise. As you have no doubt noted, during the past year CLP has been moving into the digital domain in a concerted way, offering podcasts, webinars, a Facebook page, and increasingly more in the way of e-news. We look forward to bringing you the clinical lab industry news you need in even more innovative ways as part of Anthem.

Speaking of both change and e-media, if you haven’t downloaded our September podcast, I urge you to take a listen. Our guest, Lale White, CEO of Xifin Inc and former VP of financial management for LabCorp, discusses the ins and outs of medical billing, particularly what labs need to do to prepare for the upcoming coding transitions to ICD-10 and X12 5010. The new ICD-10 coding system is much more detailed, which should in the long run improve patient care by providing payors with a more complete picture of a patient’s conditions, including why certain diagnostics are needed.

In particular, the innovative tests made possible by molecular technologies were not addressed in the old codes. The complexity of the new system, however, will necessitate several months of training at the very least, and if you’re feeling a bit behind the eight ball on this issue, Lale has some excellent pointers to help bring you and your staff up to speed.

One thing that never changes is the need for safety in the lab. Safety is so easy to take for granted, but with new pandemics brewing (H1N1) and repetitive movement injuries on the rise, protecting the health and safety of lab personnel has never been more important. Our cover story this month takes a look at the latest products in the safety space, including disinfectants that protect against pathogens such as MRSA. Safety in the lab is one topic that should not be overlooked. After all, while working so hard to ensure the health and welfare of those in our hospitals, as well as the public at large, laboratorians’ own health should not be permitted to suffer or be compromised.

Best regards,

Suzanne Clancy, PhD
editor, CLP
; (858) 793-9533