Laboratory outreach then and now: the Oregon experience.

Outreach programs, designed to extend hospital testing services to non-inpatient audiences, developed during the 1970s and early 1980s under the pressure of reimbursement restriction. Both the federal government and other third-party payers responded to the exponential explosion of health-care costs by attempting to limit and control reimbursement. In turn, hospital administrators and laboratory directors, looking for revenue streams to lessen the financial impact of these initiatives, recognized that the clinical laboratory represented an opportunity to capture revenue streams that were then flowing to independent and commercial providers.