The strange thing about all this is that my experience has been completely opposite of how this is described. Fast, easy testing was available right away. The labs seem to have had this working perfectly from the beginning of the pandemic. Since April (with initial limited availability), anyone has been able to request a test from LabCorp on their website. They bill directly to insurance, send everything overnight with simple instructions and return packaging, and email results within a day of receiving it. The cost without insurance is just over $100, and governments were quick to offer coverage for the uninsured.
I'm not sure what their capacity has been, and this article states that they anticipate a lack of capacity going into flu season, but I didn't encounter any barriers, and it was the most seamless and polished experience I've had with any medical system. It made me wish I could always deal with labs directly instead of having to go through a hospital.
So it seems that everything was done very well, very quickly, but many problems occurred on on the layer of coordination at local testing sites which can more easily serve many people. It's strange that a seemingly inefficient system like direct mailing would be so efficient while something that would seem to be much easier like a central testing location would have so many difficulties.
So we already have the capacity to connect people with labs directly, but if everyone did it, it might overwhelm their capacity. I tend to agree with the sentiment in the article that we need to address this disconnection and work on removing layers of indirection between labs and people. I'm not sure what the best method of doing that would be, but the labs seem to have already figured out most of the logistics on their own, and they just need the resources to scale up.
Comments
The strange thing about all this is that my experience has been completely opposite of how this is described. Fast, easy testing was available right away. The labs seem to have had this working perfectly from the beginning of the pandemic. Since April (with initial limited availability), anyone has been able to request a test from LabCorp on their website. They bill directly to insurance, send everything overnight with simple instructions and return packaging, and email results within a day of receiving it. The cost without insurance is just over $100, and governments were quick to offer coverage for the uninsured.
I'm not sure what their capacity has been, and this article states that they anticipate a lack of capacity going into flu season, but I didn't encounter any barriers, and it was the most seamless and polished experience I've had with any medical system. It made me wish I could always deal with labs directly instead of having to go through a hospital.
So it seems that everything was done very well, very quickly, but many problems occurred on on the layer of coordination at local testing sites which can more easily serve many people. It's strange that a seemingly inefficient system like direct mailing would be so efficient while something that would seem to be much easier like a central testing location would have so many difficulties.
So we already have the capacity to connect people with labs directly, but if everyone did it, it might overwhelm their capacity. I tend to agree with the sentiment in the article that we need to address this disconnection and work on removing layers of indirection between labs and people. I'm not sure what the best method of doing that would be, but the labs seem to have already figured out most of the logistics on their own, and they just need the resources to scale up.