Affordable Blood Work In Four Hours Coming To Pharmacies 282
kkleiner writes "With the cost of healthcare services increasing, it's welcome news that a recent deal between Walgreens and Theranos will bring rapid, accurate, low-cost blood testing to the local pharmacy. A pinprick of blood from a finger is enough to run any number of a la carte diagnostic tests with results in four hours or less. The automation of blood testing in one convenient machine may mean that the demand for clinical technicians may decline, but the benefits of making blood analysis more accessible to everyone is enormous."
OW! (Score:2)
A pinprick of blood from a finger
Why does the blood always have to come from a finger? That's where all the nerves are. Why can't you get the drop of blood from your elbow or some other place?
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Those of us that work for a living have callouses that make it pretty much not hurt at all.
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Lots of capilaries just beneath the surface, rapid healing, no scar.
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A pinprick of blood from a finger
Why does the blood always have to come from a finger? That's where all the nerves are. Why can't you get the drop of blood from your elbow or some other place?
I had to stick myself in high school as part of a biology experiment to determine my blood type. Couldn't do my finger. Ended up stabbing myself in the lower leg.
It hurt a lot less, but unfortunately, there's not as much blood on tap there.
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Re:OW! (Score:5, Funny)
Blood from the tip of your penis is actually the best blood to use for tests. If you complain about it you're just a problem patient.
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Just like the new cancer test (Score:5, Insightful)
that the winner of the international science fair came up with...detected Lung, Pancreatic and one other type of cancer using a carbon nanotube and a handful of parts he picked up at Home Depot. Cost of the test? About $0.04 and highly accurate.
What will it cost after it's commercialized? We'll see.
Re:Just like the new cancer test (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just like the new cancer test (Score:5, Informative)
Keep in mind, the cost of the pharmaceutical company's studys used to verify the accuracy of the test and gain FDA approval likely pushes the cost-per-test up quite a bit.
FTFY. Preclinical, phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3 at a minimum
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Phase I-III are needed for treatments. FDA regulation of tests is different and considerably milder.
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The ads for the test, to be aired at primetime and targeted at people who won't even have a choice in the matter (let alone the knowledge to judge whether this is "right for you"), will push the costs up further.
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These costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs. That is, these costs do not change dependent on the number of test kits produced.
So technically, no, they don't push the cost-per-test up quite a bit. The company's desire to turn a profit is what pushes up the cost-per-test.
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Are you arguing that per-unit costs are in fact average total costs, not marginal costs? That's quite the redefinition of terms...
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You mean the study that's funded almost entirely with Federal grants? :-p
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It won't push the costs up to nearly what they'll charge. Health care should not be a for-profit industry.
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And until this test is proven, it's no different than any one else's home remedy or folk wisdom. It'll be another of those "amazing breakthroughs that the government supported medical industrial complex is suppressing!", like Laetrile.
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Anyone seen a decent accuracy study for that test? Even if it detects cancer 100% of the time, that is useless if the FA rate is 99%.
But will patients actually get to see the savings. (Score:2)
If you need a blood test the doctor/hospital will likely take the blood perform test and charge accordingly leaving the patient out of the loop entirely. If this test does actually force a lower reimbursement rate, they will specify checking for conditions not covered by the test so a more expensive one has to be done
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If your doctor has requested you take a blood test, you can have that blood test done at any facility of your choice. I have personally transferred my doctor's blood tests to other facilities.
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In California, patients are prohibited from obtaining blood tests without a doctor's request. And, the test results must be sent only to the doctor without providing the patient with a copy.
Where to effectively use this.. (Score:3)
I think I'd like to see this in my doctors office. They could employ someone to take care of that, make blood work more quick for diagnostics, and patients wouldn't have to go to yet somewhere else for blood work, then everyone waits for results. I could be wrong, but it feels like this is something a doctors office might be more well invested in for the patient. And if the cost is low enough, then perhaps it's a service they add on regularly so as to insure there's not something cropping up that goes undiagnosed between visits...since we all know that particularly men don't want to go to the doctor unless something is really wrong.
But, it goes back to doctors being more invested in patients and their positive health and less about getting as many people through the door as possible in a day. However, that's probably a whole different discussion.
Accuracy of Theranos Tests (Score:2)
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That chart is pretty meaningless. suppose you have high normal Free triiodothyronine but also low normal Estradiol what does that indicate? How are they impacted my medicine? what if something moves from low normal to high normal?
I've seen to many 'self diagnosis' go bad becasue people don't understand the other effects.
It's not just a check list of normals.
Crap (Score:2)
I reread that and it sounded like I was implying I am a Medical Doctor. I am not. I used to run some very in depth analysis with multi zone/state/country hospitals.
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No, accuracy and margin of error are different concepts.
First of all Theranos is FOS. All the stuff she is touting to do is available on the open market. We will see about their prices. Their 'accuracy' is test-to-test repeatability - NOT confirmation with a reference sample. You can be very accurate and very wrong. Theranos is probably not either, and for clinical laboratory work you don't need to be terribly precise. But all of their breathless hype is total BS.
Getting lab work a couple hours (even
This fainter is very happy (Score:2)
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a) look away. seriously.
b) think about something else. other body parts, other things entirely. and think hard!
c) inform the technician ahead of time, and lay down for the duration of the needling. most techs are very accomodating.
At the doctor's I always bring
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how much blood do they take, I would think 4-6 vials.
" excessive butter consumption is fucking up my "
It is.
That will be 50 bucks please.
If if your ratio is normal, it's still impacting it.
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Funding by: (Score:3)
So - don't forget to check the box at the bottom of the form saying that you agree to their privacy policy. (whereby, your blood will give them a DNA sequence that they can sell as marketing information - which funds the tests. And the CEO's retirement plan).
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you think selling it a market material change there bottom line enough to impact a CEOs bonus? you're high.
It's used in medical research, and is a good thing.
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So how much does a blood test cost in the US? (Score:2)
I used to look after the local Lab Management System for a medical lab here in New Zealand.
Here blood tests are pretty much free when ordered by a doctor - IIRC the ministry of health gives the tester around $5 for the simple tests... if you walked off the street they might charge you $US15 for doing the paperwork.
The results were ready in a few hours, and then an EDI-style clearing house is used to deliver the results back into the doctor's patient management system, so a four hour turn-around was not unhe
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There are two prices: there is a "retail" price that is tremendously inflated. And there is a "negotiated" price that is paid by insurers. The "retail" is absolutely unaffordable.
As an example, my annual tests ordered by my physician last year were $700 "retail".
The negotiated Blue Cross rate was $130. I paid a co-pay of something like $40. So, the lab somehow cheerfully forgoes $570 revenue, and collects $40 from me and $90 from Blue Cross.
Poor people have to pay $700. Or go through horrible paperwork and
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I don't know if I should laugh or cry at that. What stops somebody setting up a lab - you could pay a lab tech's salary twice over to just do one manual test a day.
Is there some sort of cartel that doesn't supply equipment / reagents / consumables to labs that don't toe the line?
Or are the labs being screwed by their suppliers?
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Welcome to America. Nearly half our country is willing to salt the fields just to keep the other half from eating.
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So this is an attempt to solve what is not a technology problem but a political one?
I can't see that this will ever be able to make blood tests affordable to you - it will be used by the existing providers to increase profit margins while doing less work.
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Nope. You can almost always obtain the lowest prices by paying cash. While I have health insurance I almost always pay cash in order to save money. A recent blood test would have cost me about $80 if I used my health insurance. Instead I obtained the blood test for $20 by paying cash.
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Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Insurance companies have an interest in increasing medical costs.
Under Obamacare health insurance companies are allowed a maximum of 20% of the cost of medical care. The only way health insurance companies can increase their profits is by increasing medical care costs.
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The government requires the accuracy of medical tests to be determined before the tests are used on patients.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure where this breathless PR piece is leading to. We've been using 'micro' samples in automatic lab analyzers for years. Just because you can get the results from Walgreen's doesn't change things.
I imagine that Walgreens is going to run only a few tests - cholesterol, pregnancy, HIV antibody. Tests where the FDA has approved patient education for point of care testing. I don't think you can order a whole lot more without 'practicing medicine' and for that you need some sort of license. Perhaps they will limit the testing to places where they have a mini clinic with a PA (physician's assistant) or NP (nurse practitioner).
Ordering tests without knowledge of some important things (like pretest probability / accuracy and sensitivity of the tests) is basically worthless.
But what the hell, it will make somebody some money. That's what counts.
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Oh, and you can, with a prescription from a health care provider, buy a bunch of cute little point of care testing devices already. Have been able to do this for years. Works great in the field. At Walgreens, again, not so sure how useful it's going to be.
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The tests have been that quick, simple, and cheap to perform for years. It's just that now the patient can actually benefit from some of that instead of continuing to pay high prices for slow results while the lab (but never the lab tech!) makes a killing.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:5, Insightful)
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Diabetics take a course, and their immediate life depends on it, and they can' give diabetes to anyone else.
many would be given wrong, and they don't know what to look at to see if something went wrong.
Dr. Office don't really make any money from the Flu vaccines... or any vaccines. They often lose money.
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I see no reason why pre-loaded single use syringes couldn't be used quickly and effectively for the flu shot. Most of the things that go wrong won't do so until you're on your way home from the pharmacy anyway.
I don't know that we want untrained people giving shots to others, but that training need not be a medical degree.
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Whatever gave you that idea? When I started on insulin, I was told how much to put in the syringe, and the nurse checked to see if I'd gotten it right. I did, because when I was younger I'd been the caregiver for a diabetic friend who'd lost his sight and set up his daily injection, although I'd never needed to give them. That and a few instructions about how and where to inject were all of the training I got.
The first time I did it, I'll admit, was rather difficult, becaus
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. It's really a failure of the system that I can't go to "Bob's discount MRI and Bait Shop" for the "cheaper at 4AM" discount. There are only so many MRI machines in the world, so MRIs are far too expensive. Why aren't there more? Why are any of them idle at 4AM? A system that doesn't respond well to demand by increasing supply has issues.
And you see this all over healthcare. Sure, it takes a doctor to understand what test results mean in the context of patient care. But the tests themselves are just technology, and nothing brings cost down like the march of technological progress. Something's fundamentally broken when we're not seeing the cost of high-tech tests fall quickly over time.
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It's because the medical industry in the US has had laws made that exempt them from antitrust. They actively collude to restrict supply and drive up prices. The whole industry is a scam.
http://truecostofhealthcare.org/ [truecostofhealthcare.org]
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http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/17/the-banality-of-red-tape-north-carolina [reason.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need [wikipedia.org]
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In most US states a new MRI clinic (or other medical service) cannot open without permission from the state. There is some committee which decides if there is enough demand in the area to justify opening a new provider.
The original reason for that was a good one. When MRIs came out, hospitals, and free-standing radiology clinics, were buying more MRIs than anyone knew what to do with (with the help of financing from the manufacturers).
There was an epidemic of over-use of MRIs. MRIs expose you to a lot of radiation. Somebody calculated that when you give a child an MRI, that child has a 1/10,000 increased risk of brain cancer. They were advertising (useless) whole-body scans on the radio, just to fill up their machines.
So
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mean in the context of patient care. But the tests themselves are just technology, and nothing brings cost down like the march of technological progress.
Pharmacist: Here's your test. You have leukemia.
Customer: What? What does that mean? Can it be treated? How long do I have to live?
Pharmacist: I'm sorry. I'm just a pharmacist. I'm not allowed to give advice like that. You'll have to see your doctor.
Customer: But I don't have a doctor!
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The point is that even though your doctor orders tests, it's useless, often misleading, and sometimes dangerous for you to bypass your doctor and get the same (or similar) tests cheap in a pharmacy.
If you don't have the skill set to understand the tests, and your pharmacist can't legally explain them to you (because he doesn't have the skill set either) what's the point of getting them?
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh, they have a licensed pharmacist right there to analyze the results, in the rest of the world a pharmacist can basically do everything an NP can do because they have to know medicine and pharmacology to do their job.
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Uh, they have a licensed pharmacist right there to analyze the results, in the rest of the world a pharmacist can basically do everything an NP can do because they have to know medicine and pharmacology to do their job.
My insurance company sent a nurse practitioner to see me. I said, "What's this thing on my arm Is it just an aging spot or is it something more serious?" She said, "I'm not allowed to diagnose."
And for good reason she wasn't allowed to diagnose. A dermatologist spends years learning to distinguish melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and thousands of other things that look like skin cancer but aren't. Make a mistake, and the patient dies needlessly.
NP!=MD.
Neither can pharmacists make dia
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that Walgreens is going to run only a few tests - cholesterol, pregnancy, HIV antibody.
Well, it looks like a few more than that:
http://www.theranos.com/test-menu?ref=our_solution [theranos.com]
I didn't bother to count; maybe 200 in that list? Heavily tilted towards drug detection and STDs, but still a pretty good variety.
Why would I make an appointment with my doctor for 4 weeks from now, drive over, get a referral to a testing center, drive over, get stuck and drained, drive home, make another appointment for 4 weeks to get the results, drive over, and have someone read me results with no background info, when I could go to Walgreens, walk out with the results 10 minutes later, and spend 20 minutes on Google finding out what they really mean?
I would say that the fact that I can get results from Walgreens changes everything.
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"and spend 20 minutes on Google finding out what they really mean?"
that why. You do not have the knowledge to do that, and the fact you think how they mean to you can be sussed out via google is laughable.
However, I don't see why you could take the results to your Dr.
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The last time I took a blood test to my GP (ordered by my dermatologist) she said "Hmm, I don't normally order that test. Let me go look it up and see what these results mean". The five minutes that she took to do the research, and the three minutes she took to explain it to me, were insufficient; five minutes more on my own with Google after the appointment gave me a much greater understanding of the result, the meaning, and the next steps.
So, yes, I do have the knowledge to do that. And the wisdom to g
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No you don't. Blood test results only rarely provide definitive diagnosis of anything. A diagnosis requires an analysis of a series of test results and symptoms in combination, which done of your websites will do. My doctor has told me that the interpretations I find on the web, from reliable medical websites, do not apply to my case.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I took a blood test to my GP (ordered by my dermatologist) she said "Hmm, I don't normally order that test.
That's why your dermatologist should have been interpreting the results and discussing them with you. Specialists may often order tests that general practitioners don't.
A previous poster who asked why he should get an appointment and drive around and then have someone read him results over the phone demonstrated a more serious problem than just having to visit a doctor. He's got a doctor that doesn't care and doesn't explain what the results mean. Or doesn't have time to care. As more people go to the same number of doctors because they've now got insurance, that problem will get worse and not better.
I've seen this problem firsthand. My previous GP was my GP in name only; I got handled by his PA, and after one test I learned of the diagnosis from the medical equipment salesman calling to set up a time to deliver the equipment I was supposed to use instead of from the PA or GP. My current GP is much different.
So, yes, I do have the knowledge to do that.
Some people do. The vast majority do not. The vast majority will see low value on a test result and find the absolute worst possible interpretation on the web, ignoring the more common less serious possibilities. Kind of like, "OMG, I've got red spots all over my face, I must have measles", instead of thinking "I drank myself into a stupor and my frat buddies had a good time with a red sharpie." Like "OMG, my vitamin D numbers are low, I must have ..." instead of "eat more veggies with vitamin D and get more sun, or take a vitamin pill".
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I don't know what your test was, but I used to write about medical tests. I still do occasionally.
One of the problems is that a new medical test doesn't usually give you a clear answer. You want a test that says, "You have rheumatoid arthritis" or "You don't have rheumatoid arthritis." Instead, what you get is tests that say, "You have an 80% likelihood of having rheumatoid arthritis" or "you have a 20% likelihood of having rheumatoid arthritis."
If a new test isn't widely adopted by doctors, it's usually be
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Chances are you only need the doctor to clue you in once. Take cholesterol - there's little the numbers alone can tell you, unless they're extreme, but you doctor can tell you, for you specifically, what you should care about. Having done that once, you should be good for years with a test at Walgreens. I suspect this is true of all the tests they will offer.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I hope you aren't anywhere near the legislative process. People like you are why we can't have nice things.
I have ten times more motivation and available time to research than my doctor does; he's just trying to last through his 80 patients a day and not kill anyone. His training and experience are certainly valuable, but for the most part when I'm talking to a doctor s/he's either (a) a generalist with a little bit of familiarity with me and a little bit of familiarity with what might be wrong with me, or (b) a specialist that knows a great deal about one particular thing that *might* be wrong with me but knows exactly dick about me personally.
I, on the other hand, have excellent computer skills and search fu, can read, understand and critique research in some disciplines (a skill that is highly transferable, by the way), and know a great deal about myself. I'd *much* rather be able to manage my own treatment and consult with a doctor when I need insight or specialized skills.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:4, Informative)
Based on my recent experience with an illness, this is exactly what you will have to do if you ever fall out of the normal bounds of straightforward illnesses. You will be managing your own treatment and trying to piece together what's wrong with you. You will burn through doctors and specialists one by one as they say they cannot help and refuse to let you make appointments. You will end up being the only person on the whole planet who cares and all the time you will be doing this when you are sick and/or drugged up. You will also realize that the whole health care system does not work like JIRA and that there is no follow up and your issue will be dropped if you don't continue to be the squeaky wheel. Health care is not engineering. It's scary how few engineering best practices are used in it and how full of holes the "system" has. Healthcare is probably about 40 years behind engineering in terms of problems solving and issue resolution and about a million years behind understanding how our bodies work vs "complex" systems we diddle around with all day on computers.
Moral of the story is - don't get sick with anything weird otherwise you're basically toast.
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I'm not sure where this breathless PR piece is leading to. We've been using 'micro' samples in automatic lab analyzers for years. Just because you can get the results from Walgreen's doesn't change things.
I imagine that Walgreens is going to run only a few tests - cholesterol, pregnancy, HIV antibody. Tests where the FDA has approved patient education for point of care testing. I don't think you can order a whole lot more without 'practicing medicine' and for that you need some sort of license. Perhaps they will limit the testing to places where they have a mini clinic with a PA (physician's assistant) or NP (nurse practitioner).
Ordering tests without knowledge of some important things (like pretest probability / accuracy and sensitivity of the tests) is basically worthless.
But what the hell, it will make somebody some money. That's what counts.
Pharmacists have locally been granted the ability to make certain prescriptions directly without doctors orders for certain drugs. It's not a big step to integrating that with having them able to do certain tests as well.
There are certain advantages to having this ability. Walgreens is generally a lot closer and more convenient than the local testing facility and the waits are almost guaranteed to be a lot shorter.
I look at it as "distributed testing". You can test more often and more casually and offload s
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Ordering tests without knowledge of some important things (like pretest probability / accuracy and sensitivity of the tests) is basically worthless.
Hitting with a hammer ___ $5
Knowing where to hit___$495
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The good thing here is that it brings patient closer to the test - when blood travels long distances you begin to see greater variation in the end results. So it is not just about speed, if this little machine gets it right it may also improve accuracy. There is a flip side in that there probably will not be a trained clinician there to interpret and explain the results. Some people (you know who you are) might get all worked up over a slight deviation that is still within normal limits and can be easily de
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something tells me the HIV/Hepatitis tests they run aren't nearly that fast
There are some HIV and Syphilis tests that are that fast... just not as reliable. The idea is that they are biased towards false positives, so if it shows negative, you can trust it, and if it is positive, you follow up with a traditional test to confirm.
(They administer such tests at some gay events, and people get to see their results literally within minutes)
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That's funny. Pheasants also freak out at my 16 gauge.
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Our fingerstick HIV tests take about 10-12 minutes, but I'm not familiar with a Hepatitis C fingerstick test. They may have hospitals that are able to do a fingerstick Hep C test, but not a common occurrence in the clinics.
Re:hemoglobin test (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. I've got this hang up about actually wanting to be a part of raising the children I'll (hopefully) one day father.
Besides, sperm donation doesn't exactly save lives, whereas blood donation does. Last Wednesday marked my 20th donation (2.5 gallons) and the second year in a row I managed to make six donations in a calendar year, the maximum allowed in the United States and Canada. Earlier in the year I even got a letter from the ARC saying that one of my donations had been transfused into two different patients somewhere out in Buffalo.
Do you know of a way to make that kind of a positive impact for less than an hour of your time?
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I used to donate many years ago, then they changed the gauge needle they use and it started leaving a scar. After the second time it happened, I stopped donating blood. I work in professional environments, I really don't need 'track marks'.
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My premiums went up another $250/month. Deductible went from $500 to $6000, with 65% coinsurance to $9000. No prescription drug coverage. A lot of people reading this got the same news this year. Or will.
My son's birth two years ago cost me $500. Baby #2 is due this year and it's going to cost me $9000.
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I doubt it. Sounds like a lie, or some other change happened your not talking about.
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It's about getting everyone insured. Yes some people are paying more.
OTOH, under her old plan, if somethign difficult came up, they could(and probably would) cut her plan. Now they can't do that.
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It's about getting everyone insured.
Nope. Some people are finding Obamacare is cancelling their insurance while their Obamacare replacement insurance is unaffordable and they make too much for a subsidy.
So far, more people have had their insurance cancelled than the number of people who have been able to obtain a policy through the government website.
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If not, pony up some details.
Stories abound of people who have lost under the ACA, some of whom have lost big. You don't need some random /. member to tell you his story when similar stories have aired on every major news network for the last few weeks. Here's one from PBS [pbs.org], a relatively unbiased source that few would claim was rooting for the failure of the ACA.
And there are plenty MORE stories about people getting screwed by insurance companies BEFORE the ACA. Even with the ACA, it's still the insurance companies screwing you.
Okay, /. loves car analogies, so here's one. Let's say in the near future the technology for self-driving cars is well enough refined for the mass market. Now let's say failures in the automatic driving system will cause 1,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents, but the automatic driving system will save 10,000 deaths per year. Shoul
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What test are you taking?
http://www.theranos.com/test-menu?ref=our_solution [theranos.com]
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Apparently you had Sarah Palin as a reading comprehension teacher.
He is comparing the American health care system with the European health care system.
Which is far superior by every measure.
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Apparently you had Sarah Palin as a reading comprehension teacher.
He is comparing the American health care system with the European health care system.
Which is far superior by every measure.
"European" != a country, numbnuts.
Since it obviously went over your head, the Sarah Palin crack is in reference to a rumor that, during the 2008 campaign, she got into an argument with a staffer about whether Africa is a country or a continent (apparently Mrs. Palin believed the latter).
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I live in Canada and even though I don't have to pay for blood tests I still have to leave my warm igloo, hook up my dogs and then mush down to the trading post to get my blood drawn.
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In California, the insurance commissioner has said that none of the existing health insurance plans are compliant with the ACA and all must be cancelled.
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" "positive" for HIV or Hepatitis"
so what does that mean?
if you answer was anything other than ' take a second test' you fail.
And of course a significant portion of people will never report or followup when they have an STD. They will infect others, and they will apply 'pop culture' 'treatments' to serious diseases.
I look forward to people beating themselves with bushes to cure aids, and using prayer to protect others from getting infected~
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If tests are easier to get and use, I can see going in fairly often just to make sure a diet is working or that an exercise regimen is actually taking care of stuff. Plus, it might be useful checking if one has cold or flu, and treating it accordingly.
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That chart provides no interpretation whatsoever. It only says if results are within range. Someone can have a result out of range, but be a normal result for them.