Welcome to Critical Values!

Welcome to Critical Values!

A newsletter on healthcare, diagnostics, and data.

You can subscribe here on LinkedIn or on my Substack here.

https://dedeainbinder.substack.com/p/welcome-to-critical-values

What’s a critical value?

Clinicians place lab orders for their patients to better understand the state of their health. (Examples: Glucose tests measure the sugar in your blood. Lipid panels measure components, like cholesterol, in your blood.)

These tests have what we call reference ranges, standards made by the laboratory’s medical director that define what normal, abnormal, or critical result values are for the test. (With variance based on the analyzer, population, patient condition, and patient demographics, like age and gender.)

Critical values are when lab results are far outside the normal reference range and pose a significant risk to the patient’s health. (e.g. Critical glucose values for an adult male can be <50 or >400 mg/dL. Critical glucose values for a newborn can be <30 or >300 mg/dL. Source)

Critical values are a call to action. And they can come in many forms. They can be lab results or even a new HCPCS code incentivizing primary care providers to ask patients whether they have enough food to eat at home. (LinkedIn post on SDOH assessments and the $1B annual Medicare payment potential for this alone.)

Inspiration

Healthcare is a vast space. I’ve had the privilege of learning from colleagues who have forgotten more than I’ll ever know.

I’ve worked with them during my time at Epic (hospital software vendor), numerous hospital systems (Montefiore, Hackensack Meridian, CommonSpirit, MaineHealth), and as a former executive at Health Gorilla (a lab network and data interoperability Series-C startup).

I share this knowledge frequently with hospitals, startups, and VCs. And it feels right to continue sharing that here.

Quoting one of my former hospital directors:

#1 is always patient care.

#2 is whatever it takes to keep doing #1.

Let’s do this.