198 Billion Dollars in IVD Procedure Fees Earned Last Year: Kalorama Information Report

NEW YORK - March 25, 2013 - PRLog -- In Vitro Diagnostic testing has become essential to world medical practice, Kalorama Information says, so much so that almost 200 billion was earned in procedure fees last year.   Procedure fees earned by clinical laboratories in hospitals, physician offices and other venues reached $198 billion globally in 2012.   The healthcare market research firm expects that to grow by more than seven percent annually over the next five years, according to its newly published report: IVD Procedure Volume and Pricing Analysis.

“If you follow the money, you can see that testing is playing an increasingly important role,” said Bruce Carlson, Publisher of Kalorama Information, a New York City-based healthcare market research firm that publishes several IVD market reports per year.

According to Kalorama, hospitals accounted for about 63% of this while physician labs comprised about 5% and independent labs made up the rest.  Through 2017, fees will rise by 7.6% per year, on average, as a result of both procedure volume increases and small price increases in some market segments. Kalorama Information’s report contains a breakdown of the procedure fees earned by sector, but notes that core lab tests, molecular tests and hematology tests are among the largest areas of fees.

“Most are run-of-the mill clin-chem tests such as BMPs and CBCs, but a sizable portion of that are new molecular tests and histology tests that wouldn’t have been available to physicians to order 20 years ago,” notes Carlson.

The report notes that approximately 80% of physician's diagnoses are a result of laboratory tests. In addition to help a doctor diagnose a disease, IVD is playing new roles.    It is helping physicians select drug therapy,  monitor how effective drug treatment is and watching the progression of a disease that was already diagnosed.  Kalorama's procedure fee estimate includes core lab procedures such as blood gas analysis and urinalysis. It also includes allergy and clinical drug abuse testing, diabetes testing, PT coagulation tests, and a variety of molecular tests.

There are challenges to the growth of procedure fees, however, according to the report.  Ongoing pricing pressure is making price increases in the IVD and clinical lab market extremely difficult, except in cases where new products or equipment are able to provide demonstrable benefits.  Consumers are also becoming more price savvy, as a result of a soft economy, rising out of pocket medical expenditures, increasing usage of high-deductible health plans and greater price transparency of service costs through publicly available tools such as the Healthcare Blue Book (healthcarebluebook.com).

The report, IVD Procedure Volume and Pricing Analysis contains a breakout of procedures by test, by company and by regions. The report can be found at: http://www.kaloramainformation.com/IVD-Procedure-Volume-7343709/.

About Kalorama Information

Kalorama Information, a division of MarketResearch.com, supplies the latest in independent medical market research (http://www.kaloramainformation.com/) in diagnostics, biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and healthcare; as well as a full range of custom research services. We routinely assist the media with healthcare topics. Follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/KaloramaInfo), LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2177845&trk=hb_side_g) and our blog (http://www.kaloramakeypoint.blogspot.com).