The impact of the laboratory on disease management.

The laboratory has been an integral part of the continuum of care for centuries. It has been said that 60%-70% of critical decisions in diagnosis and treatment involve quantifiable laboratory data. Disease management (DM) outcomes can be influenced through effective use of this information. Today's laboratory supports DM in the following ways: disease screening for early identification of disease; predictive measures to identify those at risk for a disease; disease identification to diagnose and confirm a disease; treatment which can be initially identified or changed based upon the results of a lab test; and compliance/surveillance to identify whether a treatment is working or if the appropriate level of medication has been prescribed for a patient. This paper discusses the importance of laboratory testing in all phases of DM.