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Introducing Vital's New Lab Testing Services in New York and New Jersey

Explore how Vital’s enhanced lab testing capabilities bring healthcare providers expanded access to patients in New York and New Jersey.

Lab TestingProduct Updates
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Introducing Vital's New Lab Testing Services in New York and New Jersey
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October 11, 2024

At Vital, our mission is to enable access to clinical services, meeting patients precisely where they are. Today, we are excited to announce our public launch of convenient and fully compliant laboratory testing for patients in New York and New Jersey. Our partnership with BioReference Health and their network of patient service centers (PSCs) opens up these new regions to organizations using Vital’s lab testing API. This expansion empowers leading healthcare providers to efficiently and seamlessly extend their services to nearly 30 million additional people.

The Problem

Previously, our customers were unable to use Vital’s API to order lab tests for patients in New York and New Jersey due to restrictions from Quest and LabCorp. These barriers made delivering compliant healthcare services in these states challenging. We are pleased to announce that our partnership with BioReference has enabled us to navigate these compliance challenges.

The Solution

Starting today, Vital’s partnership with BioReference enables you to provide high-quality, patient-centric care to patients in New York and New Jersey. The enhanced services through this partnership supports the following features:

Compliant Access to the BioReference Lab Network

You can now select in-person testing at BioReference PSCs in these states. Building on previous developments, Vital’s lab API allows you to find the proper lab and bill type that would be most appropriate for your patient based on the geography, state-level compliance constraints, and the capabilities enabled on your account. That means you can utilize our API to assess whether any given order should be sent to BioReference, LabCorp or Quest based on the service ZIP code of the patient.

Looking Ahead to At-Home Phlebotomy and Rhode Island

In addition to PSCs, Vital will soon support mobile phlebotomy capabilities in these states. Our goal is to launch at-home phlebotomy for BioReference collections in the coming weeks, which will help extend our lab testing services to Rhode Island. Stay tuned for more updates.

How to Get Started

1. Price Out New Products

Work with the Vital team to price out any panels that need to be supported with our BioReference partner. Our pricing is lab-specific and will vary between BioReference and other lab partners.

2. Determine How You will Comply with Pricing Requirements

New York and New Jersey require you to demonstrate pass-through lab test pricing without markups. Additionally, price transparency rules in these states require that, upon request, patients must be able to access the same pricing that Vital provides you from BioReference. How you demonstrate pass-through pricing and make pricing transparent is at your discretion. Given the complexities and potential implications of these regulations, we recommend consulting with legal experts to ensure that your approach fully complies with local laws and regulations.

3. Vital Contract Amendment

Some Vital customers may need to sign an amendment to their MSA with Vital prior to launching lab testing services in these states. Our team will proactively provide this for you if it is necessary for your contract with Vital.
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Note, at this time, we do not support third-party insurance payments from commercial payers, Medicare, or Medicaid with BioReference.

4. Enabled BioReference Labs On Your Account

Once we are ready to enable BioReference on your account, you can create panels in sandbox and production environments and get them approved. Once a panel is approved in production, you will immediately be able to create BioReference orders from the dashboard. The next step is to enable this support via our API.

5. Update Your Technical Integration

Our suggested flow would be to utilize the Get Area Info endpoint to verify which lab resources are available in the ZIP code for your patient. You can then offer the proper products, tests and pricing based on the patient’s location. Once you have identified that the BioReference is the best fit for your patient, you can utilize the same create order endpoint and identify a BioReference-specific lab_test_id or lab_test_id’s and create a new order for a patient.

6. Update Language Around Service Area Restrictions

Remove any disclaimers indicating an inability to provide lab test services in these states.

7. Customer Outreach and Marketing

Identify and inform active or previously active patients in these states about the expanded services. Market and raise awareness of your lab testing services now that they’re available in these new markets.

Patient Experience

Orders

Similarly to Quest and LabCorp, a requisition will be created for the patient after an order is placed. If Vital email communications are enabled, the patient will receive an email linking them to resources to schedule appointments, and download the lab requisition PDF. Neither is necessarily required to access testing at a BioReference PSC (walk-ins are encouraged, and the lab will have the requisition on file in their system).

Collection

The collection can be done at any of the 77 BioReference patient service centers in New York and New Jersey. This experience is no different from Quest or LabCorp. The patient should not need to provide payment, or insurance information during collection at any point, and should refuse to do so if asked.

Results

Results will come back through the Vital API similarly as they do for LabCorp and Quest. There are no changes to the results format/schema of any kind.

Results Follow-Up

Similarly to LabCorp and Quest, if Vital’s ordering authority is used the patient may receive a call from the physician in the event that critical or life threatening lab values are detected. Besides this, as with other labs, any follow up should be done by you, our client.

Technical Details

Orders

BioReference lab test orders use an identical interface and process as Quest and LabCorp. Approved lab tests (identified by lab_test_id’s) in production will create a fully formed BioReference order for PSC walk-in testing.

Results

Results are returned through JSON, with the laboratory PDF served in the same way as we do with Quest and LabCorp.

Webhooks

The same webhooks used for our other lab testing partners such as Quest and LabCorp will apply.

Service Area Info

We previously announced updates to the Get Area Info endpoint that identify the lab services available in any particular zip code and location information for PSCs across our core lab partners (Quest, LabCorp, and BioReference), such contact information. The data this endpoint provides will help you craft experiences that direct patients to access the right laboratory testing locations as seamlessly as possible. Review the Patient Service Centers API documentation for more information.
 
For more information on this service, visit tryvital.com.

Written by

Boris Lipchin
Boris Lipchin

Product @ Vital