Thank you to Jeff Saylors for his candid comments on outsourced margin marking for Lava C.O.S. cases.
With the holidays, and the arrival of a New Year, it seems like a good time to review where we've been and where we are going with margin marking.
The Past
When we first launched the Lava C.O.S. at the end of 2007, we required doctors to work with trained and certified margin marking Partner Labs. We recognize that the doctor/lab relationship is the cornerstone to building a successful restoration. Our initial lab business model required doctors to either change labs, labs to make a significant investment in the margin marking computer and software, or precluded doctors from purchasing the C.O.S. We knew we needed to make a change.
The Present
In 2008, we launched the Affiliate Lab model. This allows labs to receive Lava C.O.S. cases without investing in the Lava C.O.S. Lab Software. It required labs to outsource the margin marking to an approved Margin Marking Outsourcing Provider. These were labs with extensive experience marking their doctor's margins. The advantage to this model was that it maintained the doctor/lab relationship. However, margin marking for a doctor that you are not familiar with can be a challenge as Jeff noted. Some of our outsourcing providers have found that margin marking helps them build relationships with new labs and can help drive other outsourcing. For many of our affiliate labs and their doctors, this process works. For others, this process has gaps and we know that we need to continue to strive for better.
The Future
The ideal scenario from my perspective is to enable any lab (or doctor) that would like to mark margins the ability to do so. In addition, we would like to enable margin markers to be more self sufficient with regard to hole filling and other data clean up. We have a few challenges to overcome but we are looking forward to some exciting new releases next year to help make these changes.
Thanks for a great year! Thanks also for your great feedback on the lab software. If you have thoughts or concerns, please let us know either by posting on our blog or contacting us directly.
Shana Cooper, Senior Product Manager, Lab Products
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