Description
January 8, 2026
Protocol Update: CAP statement on salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas
Harrison Memorial Hospital's Laboratory Department receives accreditation from the CAP
CAP laboratory accreditation checklists focus on digital pathology
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
A key cancer staging update and a conversation with Dr. Earl Colum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. Hear what he says labs should be watching most closely this year. Those stories and more, up next. This is the Path News Network Daily Edition, powered by the College of American Pathologists. I'm Stevon Burrell. Happy New Year! It's Thursday, January 8th, and here are the latest headlines. An important cancer staging update for pathologists rolled out at the start of the year. Salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas moved to American Joint Committee on Cancer Version 9 staging. In a joint statement with the AJCC, Dr. Jim Zhai, president of the CAP, says pathology reports. may continue using version 8 until updated CAP cancer protocols are released in March. Harrison Memorial Hospital Laboratory has earned a reaccreditation from the CAP following a recent on-site inspection. The laboratory has maintained CAP accreditation since 2006, undergoing a comprehensive review of quality systems, personnel qualifications, safety practices, and two years of laboratory records. HMH Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kathy Tussey says, And finally, the 2025 Checklist Edition represented one of the most significant updates in recent years. strengthening digital pathology workflows, clarifying expectations for specimen self-collection, and aligning requirements with updated CMS guidance going into 2026. Here is a re-airing of my discussion with Dr. Earl Collum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. As labs prepare, what key checklist updates should they focus on, especially those tied to digital pathology workflows, remote sign-out, and evolving CMS expectations?
Well, there are important changes in digital pathology and remote sign-out. As the use of digital pathology is continuing to rapidly evolve and expand across the laboratories, the CAP continues to update its requirements to ensure that they reflect changing technology and practice. Any scan slide used as a digital image must have the patient's identifiers soundly link to it, and be able to ensure patient record matching through the workflow across the digital pathology systems. Laboratories must also validate or verify any data or images transmitted elsewhere, especially high-resolution surgical or cytologic images, and digital pathology now needs to be included in the quality management system with items being monitored, such as system availability, scanning failures, and comparing glass versus digital interpretations. In addition to these changes, the 2025 Cytopathology Checklist contains revisions on gynecologic cytology digital image platforms to provide guidance for items such as reporting and workload recording. For remote sign-out, the CMS has continued its enforcement discretion to allow pathologists and others to review digitized images and data remotely under a main laboratory's CLIA certificate for most types of testing. However, in September of 2025, the CMS announced that it will be discontinuing enforcement discretion for digital cytology images review. in March of 2026. Note that cytology. That means that laboratories that wish to continue with remote digital cytology will need to obtain separate CLIA certificates for those locations.
Now, the CAP is highlighting a new checklist disclaimer about artificial intelligence. Why was this addition necessary, and what should laboratories understand about it?
The disclaimer regarding AI really relates to the rapid implementation of AI in almost everyone's hands so that they take material, they can summarize it, they can reword it, they can publish it, they can post it, they do all sorts of things with AI. But the disclaimer reminds people that use our checklist that they really are not allowed to use AI in the manipulation of our checklist. because it's a very valuable piece of intellectual property for the CAP. And the amount of time, effort, expertise that has gone into the crafting of these checklists, really, there's nothing else in the world that allows a laboratory to have the understanding of best practice. In the laboratory and pathology is our checklist. And it's just too valuable for people to be manipulating it because we just need to remind people that the checklists are the property of the CAP.
How can labs best prepare and use CAP resources to stay aligned and inspection ready?
The best resource to learn about the new requirements. is the Focus on Compliance webinar. It was held on December 10th, but will be posted on CAP.org in eLab Solution Suite by mid-January. The speakers, Dr. Mahmood, the Chair of the Checklist Committee, and Dr. Karen Rausch, know the checklist inside and out and are excellent speakers. Listening to that session is strongly encouraged. because they present everything laboratories need to understand, the generalities and the details of the upcoming changes.
Do you have any final thoughts for CAP accredited laboratories when it comes to the addition updates?
Well, I tell you, one of the easy things to do is download the checklist, and there's a great option. When you go to CAP.org, and you go to lab improvement or eLab solutions and choose your checklist, there's an option to choose the master checklist, the custom checklist. And you can also choose a little radio button in order to download just the checklist changes. So someone who's experienced with the process and really wants to know those changes, they can actually select the checklist. Choose changes only and print the checklist changes for that particular checklist. And that can be a great shortcut to keeping people up to date with all the changes and being able to assist laboratories to prepare for their upcoming inspections.
That's all we have for today. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or Spotify. Subscribe on your favorite platform. Look for more news like this in our weekly newsletters, published every Tuesday and Thursday. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern with more CAP News. For The Daily Edition, I'm Stevan Borel. Have a great day.
Description
January 8, 2026
Protocol Update: CAP statement on salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas
Harrison Memorial Hospital's Laboratory Department receives accreditation from the CAP
CAP laboratory accreditation checklists focus on digital pathology
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
A key cancer staging update and a conversation with Dr. Earl Colum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. Hear what he says labs should be watching most closely this year. Those stories and more, up next. This is the Path News Network Daily Edition, powered by the College of American Pathologists. I'm Stevon Burrell. Happy New Year! It's Thursday, January 8th, and here are the latest headlines. An important cancer staging update for pathologists rolled out at the start of the year. Salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas moved to American Joint Committee on Cancer Version 9 staging. In a joint statement with the AJCC, Dr. Jim Zhai, president of the CAP, says pathology reports. may continue using version 8 until updated CAP cancer protocols are released in March. Harrison Memorial Hospital Laboratory has earned a reaccreditation from the CAP following a recent on-site inspection. The laboratory has maintained CAP accreditation since 2006, undergoing a comprehensive review of quality systems, personnel qualifications, safety practices, and two years of laboratory records. HMH Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kathy Tussey says, And finally, the 2025 Checklist Edition represented one of the most significant updates in recent years. strengthening digital pathology workflows, clarifying expectations for specimen self-collection, and aligning requirements with updated CMS guidance going into 2026. Here is a re-airing of my discussion with Dr. Earl Collum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. As labs prepare, what key checklist updates should they focus on, especially those tied to digital pathology workflows, remote sign-out, and evolving CMS expectations?
Well, there are important changes in digital pathology and remote sign-out. As the use of digital pathology is continuing to rapidly evolve and expand across the laboratories, the CAP continues to update its requirements to ensure that they reflect changing technology and practice. Any scan slide used as a digital image must have the patient's identifiers soundly link to it, and be able to ensure patient record matching through the workflow across the digital pathology systems. Laboratories must also validate or verify any data or images transmitted elsewhere, especially high-resolution surgical or cytologic images, and digital pathology now needs to be included in the quality management system with items being monitored, such as system availability, scanning failures, and comparing glass versus digital interpretations. In addition to these changes, the 2025 Cytopathology Checklist contains revisions on gynecologic cytology digital image platforms to provide guidance for items such as reporting and workload recording. For remote sign-out, the CMS has continued its enforcement discretion to allow pathologists and others to review digitized images and data remotely under a main laboratory's CLIA certificate for most types of testing. However, in September of 2025, the CMS announced that it will be discontinuing enforcement discretion for digital cytology images review. in March of 2026. Note that cytology. That means that laboratories that wish to continue with remote digital cytology will need to obtain separate CLIA certificates for those locations.
Now, the CAP is highlighting a new checklist disclaimer about artificial intelligence. Why was this addition necessary, and what should laboratories understand about it?
The disclaimer regarding AI really relates to the rapid implementation of AI in almost everyone's hands so that they take material, they can summarize it, they can reword it, they can publish it, they can post it, they do all sorts of things with AI. But the disclaimer reminds people that use our checklist that they really are not allowed to use AI in the manipulation of our checklist. because it's a very valuable piece of intellectual property for the CAP. And the amount of time, effort, expertise that has gone into the crafting of these checklists, really, there's nothing else in the world that allows a laboratory to have the understanding of best practice. In the laboratory and pathology is our checklist. And it's just too valuable for people to be manipulating it because we just need to remind people that the checklists are the property of the CAP.
How can labs best prepare and use CAP resources to stay aligned and inspection ready?
The best resource to learn about the new requirements. is the Focus on Compliance webinar. It was held on December 10th, but will be posted on CAP.org in eLab Solution Suite by mid-January. The speakers, Dr. Mahmood, the Chair of the Checklist Committee, and Dr. Karen Rausch, know the checklist inside and out and are excellent speakers. Listening to that session is strongly encouraged. because they present everything laboratories need to understand, the generalities and the details of the upcoming changes.
Do you have any final thoughts for CAP accredited laboratories when it comes to the addition updates?
Well, I tell you, one of the easy things to do is download the checklist, and there's a great option. When you go to CAP.org, and you go to lab improvement or eLab solutions and choose your checklist, there's an option to choose the master checklist, the custom checklist. And you can also choose a little radio button in order to download just the checklist changes. So someone who's experienced with the process and really wants to know those changes, they can actually select the checklist. Choose changes only and print the checklist changes for that particular checklist. And that can be a great shortcut to keeping people up to date with all the changes and being able to assist laboratories to prepare for their upcoming inspections.
That's all we have for today. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or Spotify. Subscribe on your favorite platform. Look for more news like this in our weekly newsletters, published every Tuesday and Thursday. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern with more CAP News. For The Daily Edition, I'm Stevan Borel. Have a great day.
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Description
January 8, 2026
Protocol Update: CAP statement on salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas
Harrison Memorial Hospital's Laboratory Department receives accreditation from the CAP
CAP laboratory accreditation checklists focus on digital pathology
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
A key cancer staging update and a conversation with Dr. Earl Colum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. Hear what he says labs should be watching most closely this year. Those stories and more, up next. This is the Path News Network Daily Edition, powered by the College of American Pathologists. I'm Stevon Burrell. Happy New Year! It's Thursday, January 8th, and here are the latest headlines. An important cancer staging update for pathologists rolled out at the start of the year. Salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas moved to American Joint Committee on Cancer Version 9 staging. In a joint statement with the AJCC, Dr. Jim Zhai, president of the CAP, says pathology reports. may continue using version 8 until updated CAP cancer protocols are released in March. Harrison Memorial Hospital Laboratory has earned a reaccreditation from the CAP following a recent on-site inspection. The laboratory has maintained CAP accreditation since 2006, undergoing a comprehensive review of quality systems, personnel qualifications, safety practices, and two years of laboratory records. HMH Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kathy Tussey says, And finally, the 2025 Checklist Edition represented one of the most significant updates in recent years. strengthening digital pathology workflows, clarifying expectations for specimen self-collection, and aligning requirements with updated CMS guidance going into 2026. Here is a re-airing of my discussion with Dr. Earl Collum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. As labs prepare, what key checklist updates should they focus on, especially those tied to digital pathology workflows, remote sign-out, and evolving CMS expectations?
Well, there are important changes in digital pathology and remote sign-out. As the use of digital pathology is continuing to rapidly evolve and expand across the laboratories, the CAP continues to update its requirements to ensure that they reflect changing technology and practice. Any scan slide used as a digital image must have the patient's identifiers soundly link to it, and be able to ensure patient record matching through the workflow across the digital pathology systems. Laboratories must also validate or verify any data or images transmitted elsewhere, especially high-resolution surgical or cytologic images, and digital pathology now needs to be included in the quality management system with items being monitored, such as system availability, scanning failures, and comparing glass versus digital interpretations. In addition to these changes, the 2025 Cytopathology Checklist contains revisions on gynecologic cytology digital image platforms to provide guidance for items such as reporting and workload recording. For remote sign-out, the CMS has continued its enforcement discretion to allow pathologists and others to review digitized images and data remotely under a main laboratory's CLIA certificate for most types of testing. However, in September of 2025, the CMS announced that it will be discontinuing enforcement discretion for digital cytology images review. in March of 2026. Note that cytology. That means that laboratories that wish to continue with remote digital cytology will need to obtain separate CLIA certificates for those locations.
Now, the CAP is highlighting a new checklist disclaimer about artificial intelligence. Why was this addition necessary, and what should laboratories understand about it?
The disclaimer regarding AI really relates to the rapid implementation of AI in almost everyone's hands so that they take material, they can summarize it, they can reword it, they can publish it, they can post it, they do all sorts of things with AI. But the disclaimer reminds people that use our checklist that they really are not allowed to use AI in the manipulation of our checklist. because it's a very valuable piece of intellectual property for the CAP. And the amount of time, effort, expertise that has gone into the crafting of these checklists, really, there's nothing else in the world that allows a laboratory to have the understanding of best practice. In the laboratory and pathology is our checklist. And it's just too valuable for people to be manipulating it because we just need to remind people that the checklists are the property of the CAP.
How can labs best prepare and use CAP resources to stay aligned and inspection ready?
The best resource to learn about the new requirements. is the Focus on Compliance webinar. It was held on December 10th, but will be posted on CAP.org in eLab Solution Suite by mid-January. The speakers, Dr. Mahmood, the Chair of the Checklist Committee, and Dr. Karen Rausch, know the checklist inside and out and are excellent speakers. Listening to that session is strongly encouraged. because they present everything laboratories need to understand, the generalities and the details of the upcoming changes.
Do you have any final thoughts for CAP accredited laboratories when it comes to the addition updates?
Well, I tell you, one of the easy things to do is download the checklist, and there's a great option. When you go to CAP.org, and you go to lab improvement or eLab solutions and choose your checklist, there's an option to choose the master checklist, the custom checklist. And you can also choose a little radio button in order to download just the checklist changes. So someone who's experienced with the process and really wants to know those changes, they can actually select the checklist. Choose changes only and print the checklist changes for that particular checklist. And that can be a great shortcut to keeping people up to date with all the changes and being able to assist laboratories to prepare for their upcoming inspections.
That's all we have for today. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or Spotify. Subscribe on your favorite platform. Look for more news like this in our weekly newsletters, published every Tuesday and Thursday. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern with more CAP News. For The Daily Edition, I'm Stevan Borel. Have a great day.
Description
January 8, 2026
Protocol Update: CAP statement on salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas
Harrison Memorial Hospital's Laboratory Department receives accreditation from the CAP
CAP laboratory accreditation checklists focus on digital pathology
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
A key cancer staging update and a conversation with Dr. Earl Colum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. Hear what he says labs should be watching most closely this year. Those stories and more, up next. This is the Path News Network Daily Edition, powered by the College of American Pathologists. I'm Stevon Burrell. Happy New Year! It's Thursday, January 8th, and here are the latest headlines. An important cancer staging update for pathologists rolled out at the start of the year. Salivary gland and HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinomas moved to American Joint Committee on Cancer Version 9 staging. In a joint statement with the AJCC, Dr. Jim Zhai, president of the CAP, says pathology reports. may continue using version 8 until updated CAP cancer protocols are released in March. Harrison Memorial Hospital Laboratory has earned a reaccreditation from the CAP following a recent on-site inspection. The laboratory has maintained CAP accreditation since 2006, undergoing a comprehensive review of quality systems, personnel qualifications, safety practices, and two years of laboratory records. HMH Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kathy Tussey says, And finally, the 2025 Checklist Edition represented one of the most significant updates in recent years. strengthening digital pathology workflows, clarifying expectations for specimen self-collection, and aligning requirements with updated CMS guidance going into 2026. Here is a re-airing of my discussion with Dr. Earl Collum, Chair of the CAP Council on Accreditation. As labs prepare, what key checklist updates should they focus on, especially those tied to digital pathology workflows, remote sign-out, and evolving CMS expectations?
Well, there are important changes in digital pathology and remote sign-out. As the use of digital pathology is continuing to rapidly evolve and expand across the laboratories, the CAP continues to update its requirements to ensure that they reflect changing technology and practice. Any scan slide used as a digital image must have the patient's identifiers soundly link to it, and be able to ensure patient record matching through the workflow across the digital pathology systems. Laboratories must also validate or verify any data or images transmitted elsewhere, especially high-resolution surgical or cytologic images, and digital pathology now needs to be included in the quality management system with items being monitored, such as system availability, scanning failures, and comparing glass versus digital interpretations. In addition to these changes, the 2025 Cytopathology Checklist contains revisions on gynecologic cytology digital image platforms to provide guidance for items such as reporting and workload recording. For remote sign-out, the CMS has continued its enforcement discretion to allow pathologists and others to review digitized images and data remotely under a main laboratory's CLIA certificate for most types of testing. However, in September of 2025, the CMS announced that it will be discontinuing enforcement discretion for digital cytology images review. in March of 2026. Note that cytology. That means that laboratories that wish to continue with remote digital cytology will need to obtain separate CLIA certificates for those locations.
Now, the CAP is highlighting a new checklist disclaimer about artificial intelligence. Why was this addition necessary, and what should laboratories understand about it?
The disclaimer regarding AI really relates to the rapid implementation of AI in almost everyone's hands so that they take material, they can summarize it, they can reword it, they can publish it, they can post it, they do all sorts of things with AI. But the disclaimer reminds people that use our checklist that they really are not allowed to use AI in the manipulation of our checklist. because it's a very valuable piece of intellectual property for the CAP. And the amount of time, effort, expertise that has gone into the crafting of these checklists, really, there's nothing else in the world that allows a laboratory to have the understanding of best practice. In the laboratory and pathology is our checklist. And it's just too valuable for people to be manipulating it because we just need to remind people that the checklists are the property of the CAP.
How can labs best prepare and use CAP resources to stay aligned and inspection ready?
The best resource to learn about the new requirements. is the Focus on Compliance webinar. It was held on December 10th, but will be posted on CAP.org in eLab Solution Suite by mid-January. The speakers, Dr. Mahmood, the Chair of the Checklist Committee, and Dr. Karen Rausch, know the checklist inside and out and are excellent speakers. Listening to that session is strongly encouraged. because they present everything laboratories need to understand, the generalities and the details of the upcoming changes.
Do you have any final thoughts for CAP accredited laboratories when it comes to the addition updates?
Well, I tell you, one of the easy things to do is download the checklist, and there's a great option. When you go to CAP.org, and you go to lab improvement or eLab solutions and choose your checklist, there's an option to choose the master checklist, the custom checklist. And you can also choose a little radio button in order to download just the checklist changes. So someone who's experienced with the process and really wants to know those changes, they can actually select the checklist. Choose changes only and print the checklist changes for that particular checklist. And that can be a great shortcut to keeping people up to date with all the changes and being able to assist laboratories to prepare for their upcoming inspections.
That's all we have for today. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or Spotify. Subscribe on your favorite platform. Look for more news like this in our weekly newsletters, published every Tuesday and Thursday. We're back tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern with more CAP News. For The Daily Edition, I'm Stevan Borel. Have a great day.
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