The transition to value-based health care, emphasizing quality outcomes over service volume, presents challenges and opportunities for pathologists and clinical laboratorians.

To remain relevant in this evolving landscape, lab professionals must adapt their roles and focus on delivering value. Others are seizing this opportunity. Laboratories risk being left not as an asset for driving the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective health care, but as a commodity supplier focusing only on lowest cost for a resulted test. We must emphasize that our use of the term “clinical laboratory” is inclusive of laboratory medicine, anatomic pathology, molecular pathology, pathology informatics, and the broad intersection of these domains.

We argue that a new role for pathologists and the clinical laboratory, along with a new business model to pay for this role, is not only possible but essential to survival. If value-based care is the future, what can pathologists bring to that future? Can pathologists and the clinical laboratory serve as a linchpin in driving improved patient and population outcomes? Can pathologists and the clinical laboratory, as the first to know the diagnostic information they provide, be responsible for triggering coordinated care pathways for the patient’s health care journey? Will pathologists provide leadership for the multidisciplinary and inter-professional programmatic delivery of health care? We believe that the answer to all of these questions is yes. After examining the current market dynamics of value-based care, we will explore each of these questions in turn.