American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP): National COVID-19 Testing And Support Strategy
APRIL 21, 2020 UPDATE: ASCP National Test Strategy Included in Legislation Passed by Senate
President Trump and the United States Senate have agreed to historic legislation that will implement a National Testing Diagnostic Strategy. On Tuesday, the United States Senate reached a deal on a $484 billion coronavirus relief package that has $25 billion set aside for coronavirus testing. ASCP CEO Blair Holladay, PhD, MASCP, SCT(ASCP)CM, stated, "The adoption of a national testing strategy is a victory for patients who need to have access to testing immediately. We thank the President and the Senate for their wisdom in agreeing to a strategy that will make testing available as soon as possible."
The next step will be for the legislation to be sent to the House of Representatives and then to the President for his signature. The legislation also appears to include funding for laboratory workforce development and training. "The details of such provisions will need to be reviewed, but we are hopeful this will help grow the laboratory workforce for our patients," said Dr. Holladay.
ASCP will work with policymakers at the federal and state level to ensure that the details of the ASCP National Diagnostic Testing and Support Strategy are adopted.
Organized by the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP)
Lead: ASCP
ASCP has sent out an action alert: ASCP Calls for a National Testing Strategy to Improve COVID-19 Test Capacity. Where you can send a message to President Donald Trump and other federal policymakers urging the development of a National COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing and Support Strategy.
ASCP will also be hosting a Virtual Town Hall Regarding a National Testing Strategy on Monday April 20th at 8pm EST / 7pm CST. Hosted by Dr. Holladay and his guests Dr. Gene Siegal, Dr. William Finn, Dr. Gary Procop and Ms. Pam Sun as they discuss ASCP’s national COVID-19 diagnostic test and support strategy. REGISTER for this important Town hall discussion.
Also, the Association for Pathology Informatics (API) executive council further advocates for a federally funded national registry that will provide a unified national lab reporting data infrastructure and that enables public health surveillance and contact tracing. Such a foundation provides the meaningful and actionable data necessary for developing a multi-disciplinary strategy, leveraging insights from laboratorians, public health experts, infectious disease experts, tech experts, economists, etc. It is this approach that will result in the data and the tools, both societal and computational, to re-open the country and to maintain our national health in the face of the 2020 pandemic and any that might follow.
The registry should be able to process data in real-time, based on the two recommendations below:
Scalable lab reporting procedures utilizing interoperable electronic data transfer based on the ONC's structured data capture. Such workflows should ensure ease of use for lab report data to flow into a national reporting data infrastructure.
Lab report standardization based on interoperable technologies for meaningful surveillance. Such normalization will account for the spectrum of the lab test currently on-line and in development and have lab report data consistently ingestible by a national lab reporting data infrastructure.