Tag Archives: genetic testing

by | December 9, 2025 · 10:43 AM

Anatomy of an Industry-Sponsored Talk: Burden, Bias, and Biopharma

I have been reflecting on the recent National Society of Genetic Counselors conference, and I hope to continue a conversation about one session in particular within our genetic counseling community. The session titled, “Hypochondroplasia Unmasked: Recognize, Understand, Advocate,” was an industry-sponsored session, which means that a company paid a fee to host the event. Attendees must reserve a spot for these sponsored talks, and they typically include a meal (in this case, breakfast). This talk, sponsored by BioMarin Pharmaceutical, was held on the first full day of the conference and was very well attended by a robust audience of genetic counselors and students.

BioMarin is best known for Voxzogo (vosoritide), which was granted FDA approval to increase linear growth for individuals with  achondroplasia in 2021. Voxzogo is now approved for use from birth until the end of growth and is administered through daily injections at a cost of >$300K per patient, per year. The approval of this treatment, as well as the manner in which it has been tested and promoted has been controversial in the achondroplasia community. Little People of America, the world’s largest and oldest advocacy organization for people with dwarfism, has raised concerns over the FDA approval and focus on growth velocity, stating that this aim does not meet the health or quality of life needs identified by individuals with achondroplasia and that challenges related to height are mainly a result of social bias, discrimination, and lack of universal design. Those advocating for use of vosoritide speculate that increasing growth velocity may ameliorate some health concerns common to achondroplasia including sleep apnea and spinal stenosis; however, the actual effect is unknown at this time.

Hypochondroplasia is a skeletal dysplasia characterized by disproportionate short stature and mild joint laxity. Its presentation is highly variable, and individuals may reach an adult height that overlaps with typical stature. For this reason, hypochondroplasia may go undiagnosed. Of those who do receive a diagnosis, most people with hypochodroplasia have an identifiable variant in the FGFR3 gene. Variants in FGFR3 are also associated with achondroplasia. 

BioMarin does not have an FDA-approved treatment for hypochondroplasia; however, they currently have an active phase 3 study to assess vosoritide in individuals with hypochondroplasia to determine its impact on growth velocity. The speakers at the NSGC sponsored-session seemed careful not to speculate about vosoritide treatment for hypochondroplasia; yet, the company is regularly talking about vosoritide use in  hypochondroplasia with their investors. On a recent investor call, BioMarin projected the potential commercial launch date of Voxogo for hypochondroplasia in 2027. Chief Commercial Officer, Cristen Hubbard, shared a bit about BioMarin’s marketing strategy: “We’ve built the infrastructure, the relationships, and the expertise to execute effectively as new indications come online, and Voxzogo for the treatment of hypochondroplasia represents a potential significant breakthrough for patients. … many children go undiagnosed for too long, and that is why one of our priorities is improving early diagnosis for hypochondroplasia worldwide. We’re driving initiatives like genetic reclassification, clinician education, and patient and caregiver awareness, all aimed at driving earlier diagnosis. We’re also optimizing diagnostic pathways so that in the future, children can potentially access therapy as early as possible.”

As an attendee at the BioMarin sponsored talk, I have been thinking about how genetic counselors fit into BioMarin’s broader strategy. I believe the talk was intended to help build the relationships with genetic counselors given we often have trusted relationships with patients, families, other providers and health systems. They may also recognize that we support access to genetic testing. And I suspect they recognize that because we are often the first point of contact when a genetic diagnosis is made, we have significant  influence over the initial information patients and families receive regarding resources and potential treatments. 

In many ways, BioMarin is laying the groundwork for genetic counselors to facilitate earlier and expanded diagnosis of hypochondroplasia, while shaping a favorable view of treatment. This positioning seems aimed at ensuring a greater potential patient population in the event of FDA approval of Voxzogo for use in hypochondroplasia.

Of particular concern, the presentation appeared to frame hypochondroplasia in the most negative terms. Its intention likely being to frame  the condition as serious enough to justify early diagnosis and eventual treatment for our patients, but BioMarin’s rhetorical choices troubled me.This presentation aimed to exploit the biases of the audience by emphasizing how shorter stature results in health, social, and emotional harms for people with hypochondroplasia and their families and was done explicitly with a narrative of burden.

In the opening outline, the speakers highlighted the first two key objectives of the talk were to “recognize hypochondroplasia and barriers to diagnosis”, and to “understand the burden and impact of hypochondroplasia.” An online poll at the beginning of the talk asked attendees to rate on a 10 point scale “how well do you understand the burden of hypochondroplasia?” Over 80% of respondents indicated that they did not understand the burden well with a response from 1-3 with 1 indicating “not at all”. One slide heading read, “Hypochondroplasia is a rare skeletal dysplasia that can impose a substantial burden on affected individuals and their families”. The speakers repeatedly emphasized the social stigma associated with shorter stature as a cause of psychological distress. This is particularly problematic given that social stigma is a product of societal discrimination and not a product of short stature itself. Attributing the burden of social stigma to a person’s body rather than societal discrimination reinforces ableist tropes that disabled bodies require fixing rather than calling attention to societal marginalization.  

The presenters reviewed studies on quality of life scores which they used as evidence to justify that hypochondroplasia created a social and emotional burdens for families including difficulty in participating in daily activities, stress and feelings of social exclusion, and environmental barriers to development of autonomy. More progressive views of disability social justice would attribute these same findings differently and note evidence of accessibility barriers, lack of appropriate accommodations, and lack of community support, rather than problems inherent with short stature. This emphasis on the burden felt intentional, to exploit ableist assumptions about stature and disability to convince genetic counselors that competency in discussing hypochondroplasia involves framing short stature as a burden. Consequently, parents could be more easily persuaded that treatment of short stature through pharmaceutical intervention is then necessary. 

At the end of the presentation the speakers repeated the same poll questions – “Following this symposium, how well do you understand the burden of hypochondroplasia?” This time the responses  were almost reversed – nearly all respondents answered 8-10 on the 10 point scale (10 =“extremely well”). The presentation ended abruptly and the microphone was cut before anyone could ask a question. Indeed, when one of my colleagues did stand up to ask a question about the disability social-justice framing of the messaging, and the microphone was not turned on. We followed up with the speakers about the concern and were informed that they do not create the slides themselves but rather rely on BioMarin for the content and framing.

As genetic counselors we value helping families reach a diagnosis and support informed decision making about genetic testing and care. It is crucial that we critically assess  where our information is coming from and the factors motivate the delivery of this information. We need to be attuned to our own biases and recognize when they may be exploited.

I urge my colleagues to recognize how our biases shape how we think and talk about the genetic conditions, testing, and treatment. Please consider carefully the source of the information you receive and seek out information and perspectives from people with lived experiences. As commercial interests in genetic testing and treatment expand rapidly, the choices we make about what information we emphasize, whose voices we center, and how we frame genetic conditions has the power not just to influence individual families’ decisions, but also to shape the societal discourse on diversity and disability.

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by | February 29, 2024 · 11:04 AM

Direct-to-Consumer is Direct-to-Chaos for Rare Disease Families

By Devin Shuman, LCGC (she/her)

Image description: cartoon of an individual with a large mustache, a top hat, and cape standing behind a brown and red booth holding test tubes in front of a crowd of stick fingers. The booth has a banner reading "DTC snake oil" at the top and signs that read "Tests 100% of the DNA!", "Test your infant for ALL health conditions!," and "Holiday sale today!" A white speech bubble reads "Step right up! We are the ONLY ones who can give you ALL the answers!"

As a rare disease genetic counselor – who both has a rare genetic condition and serves rare disease patient populations as a provider – I have a Rare Disease Day Public Service Announcement for you: Do not order Direct-to-Consumer testing and please actively discourage other providers and patients from ordering it themselves. We need to step up as a field and take a stance.

As a genetic counselor and patient in the rare disease world, every single week I’m being asked a question about these new “direct-to-consumer” genetic testing options. It can feel like whack-a-mole, with a new company or test being asked about every month. The second you feel like you understand most of the companies offering direct-to-consumer testing – you learn about another new company you’d never heard of. 

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing is any genetic test that can be ordered directly by an individual/patient from their home without the involvement of a medical provider with a trained medical director reviewing and signing off on every report. While some of these companies claim a medical provider has “reviewed all orders,” if the patient hasn’t had an appointment with said provider – then they are really just a rubber stamp on all orders. Why is that a key detail? The providers that work for, or are contracted by these labs, are reviewing these orders because of a regulatory loophole. They have every incentive to get the lab’s brand of testing paid for whether or not it is a test that is in the patient’s best interest. These providers do not have the time, or enough interaction with the patient, to truly assess if the test (or any) is the best fit for the patient and will answer the questions they have. A provider that is not affiliated with a testing lab needs to meet with patients for pre-test counseling so they can provide a nuanced conversation for informed consent, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of proceeding with genetic testing. 

They may call it Direct-to-Consumer testing but it is more like Direct-to-Chaos testing, with “answers” that lead directly to false negatives, false positives, false promises, and patients with more questions than they started with. Except now patients have a scary list of potential conditions they’re being told they may have, but that healthcare providers can not (or should not) be using the “results” of, for diagnosing or treating symptoms. And I say this from experience – I have sorted through dozens of individuals’ “reports” from these websites and have looked up over 1,000 variants one by one. And what have I found? Not a single answer an individual was looking for.  Not a single actionable result that was confirmed. In patients who have had multiple tests done by various DTC companies, almost never are the same “pathogenic” variants even reported by all of them, let alone also identified in the genetic testing they’ve also had done through legitimate labs.

Many say they’re offering whole genome sequencing but often what they provide is a whole lot of meaningless data with zero context, and interpretations that are inaccurate and misleading. As a genetic counselor who has a genetic rare disease these companies don’t just make me frustrated due to misinformation, they make me furious. They advertise something that’s too good to be true: a single test to look at all of your DNA, testing for every condition, at a fraction of the cost of a real medical genetic test. Why is this test so much cheaper? Because they’re essentially providing a giant data dump onto people. No quality control. No interpretation. Just big data grabs from the internet that result in false positives and negatives, and typically cannot even answer the question that the patient is asking. 

“As a genetic counselor who has a genetic rare disease these companies don’t just make me frustrated due to misinformation, they make me furious.”

They purposefully target vulnerable families with unethical claims (advertising testing on infants), in order to draw individuals in by using all the right terms to mimic real testing, while carefully leaving out all of the caveats. There is a reason genetic professionals have ethical guidelines about not testing infants for adult-onset conditions. Somehow these companies are allowed to slide by as “just for fun,” while simultaneously providing individuals with lists of literally hundreds of “positive findings” for conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and BRCA1/2. “Positive findings” that in many cases are easily proven to be normal variation by checking free, public databases. How they get away with telling a patient they have a BRCA mutation and an 80% chance of breast cancer, when the variant is seen in over 99% of healthy controls (i.e. is normal variation) is astounding. 

As a rare disease patient, I understand that it is beyond agonizing to be stuck on the “diagnostic odyssey” (which I prefer to call the undiagnosed purgatory). Going through 4-10 years of specialists with endless invasive and expensive tests. Being told by provider after provider that your symptoms are either A. all in your head, B. caused by stress, or C. would go away if you could just lose weight – of course families are desperate for answers. So when a website offers a single test to cover everything – it sounds like it’s worth spending a couple hundred dollars to finally get help. What they don’t say is that they’ll provide  dozens of pages of useless, misleading information that even a trained genetics professional would take an entire week to sort through. My greatest achievement from hundreds of hours of work trying to pull something useful from these results? Talking individuals out of the extreme anxiety the false positive results have provided. 

Sure, some of the DTC companies are easy to weed out as garbage (such as the ones offering a promiscuity genetic test). But I’ve talked to parents who did “whole genome sequencing” DTC testing on their dying child, hoping that somehow this data would be useful one day – not realizing that they heartbreakingly wasted their last chance at testing, such as banking DNA to do an actual medical grade test. I’ve talked with individuals who work in cytogenetic labs who have spent months combing through their data – who describe the “risk scores” provided by these companies as “a horoscope at best.” 

The companies that sell these tests often have a disclaimer about these results only being “for fun” or “recreational,” however have in bold all over their website and advertisements the medical conditions that they claim they can test for with their “medical grade clinical test.” They know what they are doing – purposefully targeting families desperate for answers with social media campaigns, emails, and free giveaways of their product. The hard part is, when they provide literally pages and pages of “results” there will inevitably be something in that list that feels like the answer to the patient’s questions – because the test will spit out “answers” that cover every single condition and symptom out there. It’s easy to fall for the logical fallacy of thinking they’ve found their answer since it “fits”, and that’s what makes it so heartbreaking to watch. 

These families spend money they don’t have, get false positive “results,” then go to their doctors who either don’t know enough about genetics and provide unjustified medical treatment based on a false diagnosis or they get turned away by genetics clinics and dismissed by doctors for having “junk” results – leading to a real breakdown in trust and rapport between patients and providers. I’ve seen this erosion of trust causing individuals to stop seeking medical care because no provider takes the time to explain why they’re being dismissive. The last thing rare disease families need are false promises by scam companies leading to medical distrust, which just prolongs being stuck in undiagnosed purgatory without answers or treatments. DTC companies are doing actual harm to rare disease patients and families who deserve to have their very valid medical concerns addressed by real providers who take the time to provide fact based information and actual guidance regarding the benefits and limitations of doing genetic testing.

“The last thing rare disease families need are false promises by scam companies leading to medical distrust, which just prolongs being stuck in undiagnosed purgatory without answers or treatments.”

Right now America is in a genetics crisis. Many genetic clinics, if you even have one in your state, have wait lists of 1-2 years, or longer. Many turn away common indications, such as hypermobile EDS, to try and shorten their wait times. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of individuals in the US report that they are not having needed medical care done due to financial barriers. So of course a test billed at “just a couple hundred” sounds tempting when each individual panel in a genetics lab is often at least $250 and whole exome/genome sequencing is (cash pay) upwards of $3,000 – 5,000. Some websites even offer free or $20-40 “reports” based on analyzing genetic “raw data” provided by other companies’ DTC tests, with the same poorly reviewed, inaccurate data dump, useless results. The bottom line is, these direct-to chaos tests are cheap because they are snake oil. 

These pages of “results” also then leave individuals feeling like their real medical genetic testing is the “scam” as they only provide a single table of results, often between 1 and 5 variants. But the real value of the medical grade testing ordered by a trained specialist is their quality controls and their interpretation of the results. It takes skill to narrow genetic data down to only the top couple candidates for a possible answer. Anyone with a sequencer can spit out hundreds of garbage variants and call them the patient’s “answer” without any human oversight or skill. Anyone who creates a webpage can sell an “interpretation” of genetic data without any training or quality controls in place. 

They are just another example of why industry regulation is so necessary in the genetics field. We had to regulate medication quality controls, labeling, and advertising to prevent snake oil from being sold in the US in 1905; well it’s 2024 and we need to regulate genetic testing.  

We need to not just talk about the harm these DTC companies are doing but also take action. By reaching out to alums from Harvard and Stanford I got two of these companies to stop advertising as “endorsed by them” without the institute’s signoff. I’ve gotten the CEO of one company removed from the national list of genetic counselors, as he is not a genetic counselor and was falsely advertising his company as a medical genetics service. I have personally reported these companies to the FDA and have had numerous patients who sadly wasted money on these companies also report them. 

When you see harm happening to patients, you can and should speak up. Every little thing you do adds up to create real change.

We need to move past a whack-a-mole approach for every new falsely advertised snake oil option that appears but make real change to prevent them from preying on families who deserve so much better than these uselessly chaotic “results.”

“Rare disease families deserve answers. They deserve legitimate genetic testing options and access to genetic providers.” 

I am outraged at these companies because as a rare disease patient myself, it truly breaks my heart to see people profiting over the stress, chaos, and misinformation sold to those who need our support and help the most. I have supported patients as they cried realizing they lost time, money, and hope to this nonsense. And I have cried myself after I’ve talked with these patients and families, as I wish I could step through that computer and hug my patient – or at least do something to stop the tidal wave of destruction these companies leave in their wake. Rare disease families deserve answers. They deserve legitimate genetic testing options and access to genetic providers. They deserve to be protected from DTC salespeople and to learn about genetic testing options from unbiased sources (not from employees of these DTC companies). It is not your fault if you believed the false advertising – they designed it to be misleading, but you and your patients deserve better.

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by | June 14, 2023 · 12:14 PM

Guest Post: Polygenic Scores: A Demand To Laboratories For Greater Transparency, Validation, and Inclusivity

Polygenic scores (PGS), sometimes referred to as polygenic risk scores (PRS), are a developing risk estimate tool used to determine personalized risk for complex conditions that are influenced by both genetics and environment, such as breast cancer. Historically, utilization of PGS in genetic testing has been discriminatory and inequitable across various ancestries, which likely exacerbates racial inequities. While genetic ancestry is biologically based, it can correlate with race (a social construct); therefore, inequities in ancestry-based data add to racial health care disparities. Until 2021, PGS for breast cancer was only available to cisgender women of self-reported European ancestry due to a lack of sufficient GWAS data to identify relevant SNPs among other populations. Events of 2020, including the murder of George Floyd, sparked the country’s short-term widespread awareness of, and engagement in, addressing racial inequality. The country’s reaction, combined with increasing pressure from many individuals in the genetics field concerning the racial inequality of PGS, resulted in some changes in reporting practices of PGS. Laboratories who previously offered this testing updated their test menus; some removed PGS testing, while other laboratories released updated versions. 

Despite modifications, it has been demonstrated that PGS are still not equitable across ancestries. As genetics providers, we require transparency in marketing materials, equal discriminatory power across all populations, and demonstration by genetic testing laboratories of true commitment to reduction of healthcare disparities before use of PGS can be considered equitable and able to be used across ancestries. 

 In November of 2022, Hughes et al. published an updated PGS for breast cancer they call “multiple-ancestry polygenic risk score” or “MA-PRS”. The authors developed a breast cancer risk assessment with greater accuracy for cisgender women of non-European ancestry by adjusting the weight given to each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). This MA-PRS uses 56 ancestry-informative SNP markers to determine the patient’s proportion of African, East Asian, and European ancestry. It then weighs the 92 previously identified breast cancer-associated SNPs based on the relative proportion of each ancestry. 

While we acknowledge that this methodology does improve the performance of PGS in the non-European population, MA-PRS still does not perform equally across ancestral populations and therefore remains discriminatory. In particular, based on Table 2 of Hughes et al., MA-PRS does not delineate between low and high-risk scores as well for individuals who are Black/African as compared to the other ancestral categories studied. Furthermore, utilizing only three SNP-informed ancestral categories likely fails to represent many Americans. 

The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) and Wand et al. have recently published a Practice Resource on PGS which argues that “equitable access to polygenic scores is threatened by differential test performance across populations, differential capacities to support population-wide delivery of genetic services, and differential resources for [PGS] education or uptake of information in a population.” Similarly, there is a new statement on clinical application of PGS published by The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) and Abu-El-Haija et al., which includes the need to “improve available data sets for populations with non-European ancestry and optimize analytic methods [of PGS] so that genomic risk can be accurately and equitably identified across all human populations.” While the MA-PRS attempts to ameliorate some of these disparities, we argue that significant barriers to equal access remain.

In addition to these concerns regarding equity and access barriers related to the MA-PRS, there remains a significant question regarding the clinical utility of PGS. Currently, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines expressly counsel against using PGS results for clinical decision-making due to a lack of proven clinical validity. Therefore, insurance coverage for any medical management based on an elevated PGS score is highly in question. Similarly, the NSGC Practice Resource states, “clinical utility of [PGS] remains largely hypothetical, with increasing research evaluating clinical outcomes.” Furthermore, “genetic counseling about [PGS] should be framed in the broader context….[PGS] often does not capture all genetic risk.”  

Considering the remaining disparity in clinical validity among populations, the complexity of PGS results interpretation, the lack of demonstrated clinical utility, and the potential lack of insurance coverage, we argue that significant work from the genetics community is still needed in order for PGS to truly be equitable and clinically useful. We acknowledge that MA-PRS are a first step towards that goal, but additional improvements need to continue. 

As laboratories continue to improve or develop PGS, we ask for the following:

  1. Transparency by genetic testing laboratories offering PGS.
  • Is this PGS performing equitably across ancestries? If marketed towards diverse patient use but without actual equal performance this could be misleading at best, and potentially harmful to patients at worst.
    • Is there clinical utility currently for this PGS? Providers should not be told that PGS will help with clinical management and qualifying for high-risk cancer screenings so long as NCCN and other governing bodies recommend against such.
  • Validation and equal power across all populations.
  • Who can use this PGS? Given the development of PGS for use in non-European populations, there should not be movement backward. All future PGS options should be available and validated in diverse populations.
    • How well does this PGS perform in diverse populations? There should be equal power and validation across all ancestral groups; it should not perform better or worse for one group over another. 
  • Demonstration of true commitment to inclusion and equity for patients by addressing underlying barriers. 
  • What research and data is this PGS based on? Eighty-four percent  of GWAS participants in cancer risk studies are of European ancestry. This GWAS data has been the foundation of all genetic testing (including PGS). We encourage researchers to foster a culture of transparency and trust with underrepresented populations with goals of obtaining ancestrally diverse representative data. Therefore, allowing for development of wholly new PGS and mitigating the need to reanalyze the currently available and ancestrally limited data.
    • What relationships are involved? Who are the collaborators? Bias exists in many areas of medicine; limiting that bias should be done whenever possible. Collaboration with and funding for groups specifically focused on diverse experiences, such as patient advisory boards and community-based participatory research projects, should be prioritized. 
    • How are other barriers or health disparities being addressed by laboratories offering PGS? Health disparities in genetics, such as access to genetic counselors or germline testing and higher rates of variants of uncertain significance for patients who are from underrepresented populations, already exist. As mentioned, although race is a social construct, disparities of testing and healthcare based on ancestry further exacerbate racial inequities. True commitment to inclusion and equity does not stop at PGS. Rather, it is necessary to address across all areas of genetics and throughout other health care specialties.

If you agree, join us and please sign this petition to register your support for transparency, validation across populations, and true commitment to inclusion and equity from PGS producing laboratories. These are the opinions of the individuals listed below, and not their institutions. 

[alphabetical order] 

Fatima Amir, MS, CGC

Suzy Cahn, MMSc, CGC

Tiffiney Carter, MS, CGC

Hayley Cassingham, MS, CGC

Katie Church, MS, CGC

Jeanne Devine, MS, CGC

Jennifer Eichmeyer, MS, CGC

Lauren Gima, MS, CGC

Helen Kim, MA, MS, CGC

Katie Lang, MS, CGC

Heewon Lee, MS, CGC

Kelsie McVeety, MS, LCGC

Jessica Scott, MS, CGC

Stephanie Spaulding, MGC, CGC

Melissa Truelson, MS, LCGC

Natalie Vriesen, MS, CGC

Kristin Zelley, MS, LCGC

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by | September 26, 2022 · 5:02 PM

Unprofitable Genetic Testing Labs – The Size of the Loss, The Reasons for the Loss, and What It Means for Genetic Counseling and Genetic Counselors

By Katie Stoll, MS, Jessie Conta, MS, and Michael Astion, MD, PHD

Genetic counseling is a critical part of the genetic services process, beyond just coordination and ordering of a genetic test. However, as the genetic counseling profession has grown alongside the expansion of genetic testing, it has become increasingly intertwined with and dependent upon the financial success of commercial genetic testing laboratories. The relationship risks undervaluing genetic counseling and the breadth of the services genetic counselors provide.

The genetic testing industry has seen rapid growth over the past two decades, with many new companies and billions of dollars invested into start-up genetic testing labs. Despite the enthusiasm of venture capitalists and other investors, commercial genetic testing labs are largely unprofitable, and the losses are significant and sustained. This is shown in Tables 1 and 2 below which are derived from analyzing publicly available, quarterly and annual financial reports (10-Q and10-K Filings) of publicly traded companies whose primary business is clinical genetic/genomic testing.

As shown in the tables, it is common for publicly traded, genetic testing labs to report annual losses of >$100 million. In 2021, only one lab, Fulgent, made a profit (Table 1). However, Fulgent’s 2021 – 2022 quarterly reports (Table 2) indicate that profits aren’t attributable to genetic testing, but rather to COVID test sales, which accounted for ~88% of their 2021 revenue. Myriad has seen a consistent decline in revenue since the US Supreme Court’s ruling in 2013, which forbid human gene patenting and therefore caused Myriad to lose their lucrative BRCA testing monopoly. Although the losses have not been as severe as their competitors, Myriad has not been profitable since 2019, and they have reported greater losses in the first two quarters of 2022 than their annual loss in 2021.

Profit and loss data is difficult to obtain from private genetic testing companies such as Color Genomics, as well as from genetic testing labs owned by much larger, diversified companies, as is the case with Ambry being owned by Konica Minolta. Similarly, profit and loss data on genetic testing is unavailable from integrated health systems, academic medical centers, or publicly traded labs –like Quest, LabCorp, and BioReference— who only have a small portion of their overall testing business in genetics. In regards to academic labs and labs in integrated health systems, our experience, as well as discussions we have had with colleagues strongly suggest that genetic testing is performed at a financial loss, and that it is the overall profit of these full-service labs that allow them to support genetic testing.

Why aren’t genetic testing companies profitable?

Publicly traded genetic testing labs are unprofitable for a variety of reasons. The top reasons are poor reimbursement from insurance plans and patients; intense competition; and excessive expenses for sales, marketing, and executive compensation. In addition, the inclusion of genetic counseling, which companies have highly valued as part of their testing service, adds an expense that is not seen in the other analytic sections of a full-service clinical lab.

Insurance reimbursement

The service of genetic testing is a costly one to deliver and is much more expensive than a lab’s cost to perform other tests. For example, the fully loaded cost of performing a typical test in a highly automated, hospital-based core laboratory is in the range of $10-$20 per test. This includes common tests like complete blood counts, electrolytes, basic coagulation tests, thyroid screening tests, and liver function tests.  For an insurance plan this type of common testing is >65% of their expenses. The cost to labs of genetic testing is much higher, often 10-100-fold higher. Genetic testing usually represents < 20% of an insurance plan’s spending on lab tests.

Why is genetic testing so costly to labs? The main reason is that it is difficult scale genetic testing in a manner analogous to common, high-volume laboratory tests. Compared to common tests, genetic testing is more labor-intensive, more time consuming, involves higher-wage staff, and involves technology that has a higher cost per test. Genetic testing is time consuming because it requires complex tasks not seen with common tests, such as variant analysis, curation, review, and updating. And for many companies, it also includes providing the genetic counseling service, which is often bundled into the service of providing the test. Overall, genetic testing is a personalized, complex technical service which has resisted, for now, the type of full automation that has benefited other parts of the clinical lab.

The high cost for performing genetic testing necessitates high costs to patients and their insurance companies. Historically, insurance companies are mediocre at regulating high-volume, low-cost lab tests because it is too cumbersome and expensive to manage. However, insurance companies have many effective tools for regulating high-cost procedures, including genetic tests. The result is that high-volume, low-cost laboratory tests have a relatively open door to reasonable insurance payments, and insurers invest only a little energy toward closing that door. In the case of genetic testing, the door is closed or only partially open.

Besides negotiating fees with certain labs, the main method that insurance plans use to control genetic test reimbursement is detailed medical necessity policies tied to preauthorization systems. Insurance companies either develop the policies and pre-auth systems or purchase them from third-party benefits managers. Overall, the method involves using software that aids decision making in combination with genetic counselors, nurses, and physicians who adjudicate cases at various decision levels. This approach is then married to an insurance plan’s usual and customary procedures for handling grievances from patients and labs that have been denied payment. For insurance plans, this type of complex system, which is both software and labor intensive, would have a poor return on investment if applied to low-cost, high volume lab tests. But for genetic testing, this type of system has an excellent return on investment, and so insurers are highly motivated to regulate genetic testing. In addition, these insurance systems tend to be overly tuned to block fraud, waste and abuse, and often delayed in keeping up with scientific evidence. Therefore, insurance systems may block some medically necessary genetic testing.

Patients bear high out-of-pocket costs for genetic testing. This is because they are financially liable when their insurers do not cover the test, and, even when insurers provide coverage, there still can be high deductibles or co-pays. In the laboratory industry, it is very expensive to recover the money that the patient owes, and poor financial recoveries from patients is common. This failure to recover the patient portion of the bill adversely affects the bottom line of genetic testing labs.

Response to poor reimbursement from insurers and patients

Many labs performing genetic testing have responded to preauthorization requirements by investing in resources – which sometimes can create an entire division or department – that provide support with prior-authorizations, as well as appeals and support when test coverage is denied. This can help grow the testing business because it removes a barrier that blocks some providers from ordering testing. However, the removal of the barrier comes at a high cost to the genetic testing lab.

To help patients directly, some labs have promised patients low out-of-pocket costs either through reducing the patient’s responsibility under their insurance plan, or by promoting self-pay options that avoids involving the insurance plan. Thus, some labs promise patient out-of-pocket maximums, typically advertised as about $100 when insurance does not cover testing.

For self-pay options that do not involve insurance, the price for genetic testing for patients is often much lower than the list price available to care providers, and it is highly likely that price does not cover the costs of the tests. The current going rate at most labs for self-pay testing for multigene panels is around $250, which is usually much less than what labs try to collect from payers, including Medicare and Medicaid for the same test.

Sales and Marketing

A review of publicly available, 10-K submissions, show that it is not unusual for genetic testing companies to have marketing and sales budgets around 40-50% or more of revenue, which is much higher than typically seen in established, full service clinical laboratories. This most likely relates to the goal of growing revenue and capturing market share, despite the high cost of achieving this in a competitive, and poorly reimbursed business. Those NSGC parties, sponsored luncheon and dinner events, “free” CEU opportunities, and even the complementary genetic counseling, all come at a cost for the marketing and sales budgets of these companies.

Executive compensation

Another contributor to financial losses in publicly traded genetic testing labs is the high pay of executive leadership, including chief executives. Review of executive compensation data shows that executive pay is often inversely correlated with net profits – the longer that a company lasts, regardless of how deep the losses grow, executives tend to be well rewarded. For example, Natera reported compensation for the company’s chief executives totaling $8 million while company losses totaled $128 million in 2018. Contrast this to 2021, when Natera’s C-Suite compensation was > $53 million despite company losses that were > $471 million.

Although these companies are not generating operating profits, their investors aren’t necessarily hurting as a result. Stock prices for boutique, genetic testing labs don’t often sync with the lab’s financial health, and based on reported trading of company insiders, some investors are gaining significant wealth despite the losses of these labs. For example, Invitae hit all time stock highs in December 2020 despite enormous losses reported in every quarter that year. The net loss for Invitae in 2020 was >$600 million, while that same year Invitae insiders cashed out more > $46 million in stock. Another example is that the current CEO of Natera cashed in nearly $76 million in stock over the past four years, while cumulative losses for Natera totaled >$ 1 billion over that same period.

What is at stake for genetic counseling?

A 2018 publication in the Journal of Genetic Counseling analyzed the financial challenges of commercial genetic testing labs and what that could mean for genetic counselors. The authors speculated that genetic testing companies may not find a path to profitability, and their ability to support genetic counseling services may subsequently decrease.

Since this initial analysis, the losses of these companies have continued to grow, and investors have become less enthusiastic. This has put pressure on many companies to change and adjust their business strategy in order to survive. For some, this means cost cutting measures to decrease their cash burn with hopes to increase the odds of profitability. And as predicted, difficult decisions are taking place with many genetic testing companies resulting in layoffs of staff, including genetic counselors. Last month, Invitae announced layoffs of over 1,000 staff, including most of their clinical genetic counselors. SEMA4 and Ambry Genetics have also had layoffs in recent months. Given the overall picture of the financial health of all these labs, and increasing challenges in raising funds, it is likely there will be more layoffs to come for genetic counselors and others who work at these companies.

What does the current financial state of genetic testing laboratories mean for the delivery of genetic services and for the genetic counseling profession? A substantial portion of genetic counseling is now delivered through genetic testing laboratories who have packaged genetic testing with the offer of genetic counseling to draw in clients. If we see fewer companies maintaining genetic counselors on their staff, where will genetic counseling support come from for these patients? In addition to the labs themselves, many of the growing genetic counseling telehealth companies are closely tied to the testing laboratories, with much of their funding and contracts coming through commercial laboratories rather than direct patient referrals or contracts with clinics. It seems possible that these arrangements could also be negatively affected with current financial pressures and cuts to “extra” costs. Genetic counseling is not an “extra” bonus service, but rather a critical part of the genetic services process. Relying on genetic testing companies’ funding to ensure access to this service does not appear to be a sustainable model.

For genetic counseling services to be sustained, independent of the financial health of corporate testing laboratories, it is essential that genetic counseling be recognized and reimbursed as an independent service, with inherent value that is separate from genetic testing. Recognition by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is a necessary step towards sustainable and independent genetic counseling services, regardless of service delivery modality. I hope you all will join in continued advocacy to see the Access to Genetic Counselor Services Act H.R. 2144 / S. 1450 enacted into law.

Michael L. Astion is a clinical pathologist who is Medical Director, Department of Laboratories at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Clinical Professor of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington. For almost two decades he worked at the University of Washington, Department of Laboratory Medicine where he was a Professor and Director of Reference Laboratory Services. His career is divided between clinical service, teaching, clinical service, and research and development. He is the editor-in-chief of Patient Safety Focus, which appears quarterly within AACCs Clinical Laboratory News. He is one of the founders of PLUGS (Patient-centered Laboratory Utilization Guidance Services), a national collaboration whose mission is to improve test ordering, retrieval, interpretation and reimbursement. Dr. Astion is a frequent speaker at professional meetings, where he lectures on issues related to laboratory test utilization; test interpretation; laboratory economics and outreach; and medical errors.

Jessie Conta is a licensed genetic counselor in the Department of Laboratories at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She received her Master of Science degree in genetic counseling from Brandeis University. As the Manager of the Laboratory Stewardship Program at Seattle Children’s, she leads genetic test stewardship interventions, including insurance alignment related to genetic testing. Jessie is also a co-founder and Director of Genetic Counseling Services for PLUGS (Patient-centered Laboratory Utilization Guidance Services), a national collaboration whose mission is to improve test ordering, retrieval, interpretation and reimbursement.

6 Comments

Filed under Guest Blogger, Katie Stoll

Tagged as , ,

by | March 30, 2022 · 8:38 AM

ACMG Carrier Screening Guideline: The Hypothetical “Tier 3” Panel

This post was modified on 3/30/2022 with input presented by some DNA Exchange readers.  First – the original post did not account for the fact that ELP1 is reported out as IKBKAP by Natera, SEMA4 and Quest. Table and graph were updated to reflect this. 

While the list of labs surveyed for this post was not intended to include all labs that offer carrier screening, it has been noted since this was initially posted that Fulgent does offer a carrier screening panel based on the ACMG Tier 3 recommendation. A paragraph has been added to reflect Fulgent’s test offering.

In July 2021, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics published a new carrier screening guideline, Screening for autosomal recessive and X-linked conditions during pregnancy and preconception: a practice resource of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG). The gist of this recommendation is that all individuals who are considering pregnancy or who are pregnant should be offered a carrier screening panel inclusive of 113 specific genes. In a prior post, Bob Resta and I shared our concerns regarding ethical issues and the ways in which this panel was designed.

With this post I have a practical question regarding implementation: How does one order a carrier screening panel of these ACMG-recommended genes when such a panel does not exist?  

A quick recap of the ACMG carrier recommendation. The guideline defines 4 tiers of carrier screening:

Carrier Screening Tiers defined in the ACMG Practice resource, Screening for autosomal recessive and X-linked conditions during pregnancy and preconception: a practice resource of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).

The carrier frequencies utilized are based on the public database gnomAD and represent carrier frequencies for any subpopulation that makes up at least 1% of the United States total population. 

The goal of this ACMG recommendation was to define a standard panel that could be offered to all patients. The guideline recommends that all patients who are pregnant or are considering pregnancy be offered the “Tier 3” panel, and that reproductive partners may also be offered the Tier 3 panel simultaneously. This panel is inclusive of 113 genes, 86 of which were derived from the gnomAD data as having a carrier frequency of 1 in 200 or higher; 11 additional genes were  “highly represented in one or more patient populations and have potential to be underrepresented in gnomAD”; and 16 genes associated with X-linked conditions with a prevalence of 1 in 40,000 or higher.

ACMG recommends against using the Tier 1 or Tier 2 panel for any patient. Further, it states that the Tier 4 panel be reserved “for consanguineous pregnancies (second cousins or closer) and in couples where family or medical history suggests Tier 4 screening might be beneficial.”

A huge problem with this recommendation is that the Tier 3 panel, as it is described by ACMG, does not exist as an orderable test through most labs. I have surveyed several labs, and those with the biggest commercially available panels do not provide coverage for somewhere between 25 and 49 genes of the 113 that are outlined by ACMG for the Tier 3 panel.  

Analysis of carrier screening labs performed on March 24, 2022. For a full list of genes by lab, see Table below. 

Some of the labs I have highlighted in this analysis have published press releases and sent emails to their client base in enthusiastic support of these guidelines that call for expanded carrier screening, even though NONE of them actually offer what ACMG currently recommends. The Industry lobbying group for Myriad, Natera, SEMA4 and ThermoFisher, the Access to Equitable Carrier Screening Coalition “applauds American College Of Genetics And Genomics” on this new recommendation that none of these labs can currently fulfill.  

One lab, Fulgent Genetics, offers a panel that is based on the Tier 3 recommendation, along with several caveats and limitations for some of the recommended genes that have common variants that may be missed or are expected to escape detection by their platform. While the Fulgent panel includes  all 113 ACMG-recommended genes, these caveats and limitations demonstrate that sensitivity across the genes included can vary dramatically and may be low in cases where the common mutation is a trinucleotide repeat, inversion or other alteration not reliably identified through next generation sequencing.  For example, Fulgent reports including FXN analysis on their panel with the caveat that their analysis will only detect sequence variants  which account for <5% of pathogenic  variants in this gene (the vast majority of FXN pathogenic variants  are due to GAA repeat expansion.)

Perhaps Fulgent along with other labs that are working to develop a panel that meets the ACMG requirements and will be able to identify most pathogenic variants in the 113 gene set.  It may be difficult to do this and keep the cost of testing down as there are technical challenges to assessing some of the genes that ACMG recommends. For example, the most common mutation in the F8 gene is a gene inversion. With PLP1 the most common mutation is a gene duplication. Rearrangements are common with the OCA2 gene. These technical variations present a challenge to labs as they expand their carrier screening panels. From the marketing perspective, adding 50 genes to their currently existing platform may seem more impressive than adding a small handful of more technically difficult ACMG-recommended genes.

Do obstetrical care providers recognize that when they are ordering an expanded panel that it may include hundreds of genes that are not recommended while missing several genes that are part of this ACMG-produced panel? What does this mean for our liability as providers when we cannot order a test that is recommended by our professional society? 

In a future post I plan to focus on carrier screening for cystic fibrosis and some of the harm seen from reporting practices on expanded carrier screening. But for now I would like to reflect back to the time when we first considered screening for cystic fibrosis, the rollout of which was not without challenges. Before guidelines were issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Medical Genetics, there was significant preparation for implementation. Care was taken to determine whether we knew that the variants included on the CFTR panel cause disease. We thought we were clear about this but even with great scrutiny, the original 25 mutation panel included a variant that we eventually learned did not cause disease. There were standards written for laboratories regarding how to do the testing and what should be included in the report. There were educational resources developed for patients and providers. There appears to be much less care and preparation with these current guidelines in spite of the recommendations for testing for many more as well as increasingly complex conditions.

In today’s world of carrier screening, we see both the 113 gene Tier 3 panel recommended by the ACMG as well as commercial laboratories in constant competition to expand the size of their carrier panels. Yes, labs are expanding their genetic carrier screening offerings, but it does not appear (regardless of their marketing materials) that the recommendations from ACMG are the reason why. Even some of the biggest panels available don’t include 22-43% of the genes recommended by the ACMG while providing coverage for numerous genes that are not included in the recommendation. Data regarding performance characteristics of screening for many of these genes both within and beyond the panel are lacking. As a result, pre and post test counseling our patients regarding carrier screening and the downstream challenges are just going to become increasingly more complex.  

ACMG Tier 3 Panel
Labcorp / Integrated Inheritest® 500 PLUS Panel
SEMA4 Expanded Carrier Screen (502 Genes)
Natera Horizon™ 421
Myriad Foresight®
Invitae Comprehensive Carrier Screen
Quest QHerit(R) Extended
ABCA3
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
✘
ABCC8
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ABCD1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ACADM
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ACADVL
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ACAT1
✔
✔
✔
✘
✔
✔
AFF2
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
AGA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
AGXT
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
AHI1
✔
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
AIRE
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ALDOB
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ALPL
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ANO10
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
ARSA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ARX
✘
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
ASL
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ASPA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ATP7b
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
BBS1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
BBS2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
BCKDHB
✔
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BLM
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
BTD
✔
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✔
✔
✔
✔
CBS
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
CC2D2A
✘
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
CCDC88C
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
CEP290
✔
✔
✔
✘
✔
✔
CFTR
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
CHRNE
✘
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
CLCN1
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
CLRN1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
CNGB3
✘
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
COL7A1
✘
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
CPT2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
CYP11A1
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
✘
CYP21A2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
CYP27A1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
CYP27B1
✘
✔
✔
✘
✘
✘
DHCR7
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
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DHDDS
✔
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✘
✔
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DLD
✔
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✔
✔
✔
✔
DMD
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
DYNC2H1
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
ELP1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
ERCC2
✔
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
EVC2
✘
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
F8
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
F9
✘
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
FAH
✔
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✔
✔
✔
✔
FANCC
✔
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FKRP
✔
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✔
✔
✔
✘
FKTN
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
FMO3
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
FMR1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
FXN
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
G6PC
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GAA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GALT
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GBA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GBE1
✔
✔
✔
✘
✔
✔
GJB2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GLA
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
GNPTAB
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
GRIP1
✔
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
HBA1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
HBA2
✔
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HBB
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HEXA
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HPS1
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HPS3
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✘
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IDUA
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L1CAM
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LRP2
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✘
✘
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✘
MCCC2
✔
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✘
✔
✔
MCOLN1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
MCPH1
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
MID1
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
MLC1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
MMACHC
✔
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✔
✔
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MMUT
✔
✘
✘
✔
✘
✘
MVK
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
NAGA
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
NEB
✔
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✔
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✔
✔
NPHS1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
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NR0B1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
OCA2
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
OTC
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
PAH
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
PCDH15
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
PKHD1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
PLP1
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
PMM2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
POLG
✘
✔
✔
✘
✘
✘
PRF1
✔
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
RARS2
✔
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
RNASEH2B
✔
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
RPGR
✔
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
RS1
✘
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
SCO2
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
SLC19A3
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
SLC26A2
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
SLC26A4
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
SLC37A4
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
SLC6A8
✔
✔
✔
✘
✔
✘
SMN1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
SMPD1
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
TF
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
TMEM216
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
TNXB
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
✘
TYR
✘
✔
✘
✘
✘
✘
USH2A
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
XPC
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✘
As of March 23, 2022

Quest Diagnostics QHerit™ Extended

Myriad Foresight® Carrier ScreenUniversal Panel

Invitae Comprehensive Carrier Screen

Labcorp / IntegratedInheritest® 500 PLUS Panel

SEMA4 Expanded Carrier Screen (502 Genes)

Natera Horizon 421 (from printed materials provided by Natera)

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Tagged as , , , ,

by | October 12, 2021 · 2:44 PM

An offer too good to be true? Might be a kickback.

Consider this imaginary scenario from three perspectives:

#1 You are an administrator for a large healthcare system in your community that is facing a greater demand for mental health services than ever before. Qualified mental healthcare providers are in high demand leading to psychiatrists and counselors demanding higher wages; yet reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid haven’t kept up.

A well-known pharmaceutical company approaches you with a new program which includes a computer program that will interface directly with the healthcare system’s electronic medical record. This program has a suite of tools that will provide patient education, screen patients for depression and other mental health concerns and can make recommendations for treatment based on chatbots and pre-programmed algorithms. The program also allows for ease of ordering and delivery of medications, directly to the patients that are identified as possibly benefiting them. The system will check insurance benefits, handle billing, and provide education to the patient making the whole process seamless and burden-free for your clinical staff and providers. And the pharmaceutical company will provide direct access to mental health counselors and psychiatrists to take care of your patients when there are needs beyond what the chatbot and videos can provide. This is all offered to your healthcare system free of charge. This is a departure from how mental health services have been offered previously within in your healthcare system, however you are convinced that this program it would increase access to care that is desperately needed and greatly benefit your budget as well.  

#2 You are a psychiatrist that has worked in a community health practice for many years. The work is taxing and not well supported. When you were recruited by a pharmaceutical company it felt like an easy choice. The pay that was offered was nearly double what you were paid when working for community health and the perks, benefits and hours allow for a much-improved work-life balance. And with so many tools for efficiency and support, you believed that more patients would be reached in the system through access to medications than you could have ever reached through traditional clinical care.

#3 You work in business development for a pharmaceutical company. Integrating into healthcare systems with tools to boost clinic efficiency and support health care providers like free electronic mental health screening questionnaires and algorithms for treatment recommendations means that more patients will be reached, and more prescriptions will be sold. Direct access to patient information input into company tools, such as the questionnaires, as well as control over the tools and their internal algorithms mean that the company can engineer the tools to make recommendations for prescribers that will garner the highest payment from insurance payers. This direct access is solid gold in the pharmaceutical business. The salaries of psychiatrists and mental health professionals are easily paid for by a fraction of the increased revenues in prescription sales. And the opportunity to have psychiatrists and mental health counselors on the pharmaceutical company staff, to interact directly with healthcare system providers and staff as well as patients has shown to be a powerful sales tool that gives healthcare systems the confidence to utilize the company’s platform.

Could this scenario happen? If so, is there a problem with it?

Let’s first consider the positives:

  • Improved patient access for a needed service.
  • Earning potential for expert healthcare providers.
  • Pharmaceutical company is making a healthy profit (as a successful business should)

And the negatives?

  • The pharmaceutical company is essentially monopolizing prescribing for the healthcare system.
  • In the interest of profits, the pharmaceutical company is incentivized to influence prescribing to maximize reimbursement.
  • Excessive prescribing practices may result, that are not necessarily in the best interest of the patient and may incur great costs for the payers and broader health system.
  • The healthcare system is allowing sensitive patient information to be shared with the pharmaceutical company which may also raise patient privacy and data sharing concerns.

Such a scenario is ethically murky and likely would be problematic given state and federal anti-kickback statutes. While patient access to services may be increased, there is a risk that the profit interests of the pharmaceutical company would be prioritized over the best interests of the patients and the healthcare system.

The anti-kickback laws are intent-based, criminal statutes that prohibit intentional remuneration, whether monetary or in-kind, in exchange for referrals or other Federally funded health care program business.

From the Office of the Inspector General (OIG): The types of remuneration covered specifically include, without limitation, kickbacks, bribes, and rebates, whether made directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind. In addition, prohibited conduct includes not only the payment of remuneration intended to induce or reward referrals of patients but also the payment of remuneration intended to induce or reward the purchasing, leasing, or ordering of, or arranging for or recommending the purchasing, leasing, or ordering of, any good, facility, service, or item reimbursable by any Federal health care program.

Further the OIG  states that remuneration to encourage referrals in health care can lead to:

  • Overutilization
  • Increased program costs
  • Corruption of medical decision making
  • Patient steering
  • Unfair competition

The above imaginary scenario could be especially problematic given the involvement of healthcare providers, psychiatrists and mental health counselors. The practice of using physicians or other health care professionals involved in direct marketing activities has been termed, “white coat” marketing. See OIG Advisory Opinion No. 11-08: “White coat marketing is closely scrutinized under the anti-kickback statute because physicians and other healthcare professionals are in an exceptional position of public trust and thus may exert undue influence when recommending health care-related items or services…Given the nature of these relationships, when physicians or other health care professionals market items and services to their patients, patients may have difficulty distinguishing between professional medical advice and a commercial sales pitch.”

How does this connect to genetic counseling?

Currently, throughout the United States, genetic testing laboratories are approaching physician clinics, hospitals, and healthcare systems with proposals to help streamline genetic services. These laboratories promise a bi-directional interface with the local EMR to ease test ordering and reporting. They provide screening tools to identify patients who meet clinical guidelines for genetic testing and videos to provide information to support pretest consent. They provide insurance authorization and billing follow-up. And they provide genetic counseling support to patients who use their tests. Furthermore, the labs are often making big claims about the potential for downstream revenue that could be generated from more genetic testing in the system in terms of imaging, risk reducing surgeries, procedures, etc. that may be recommended once high-risk patients are identified.

Could any of these complementary services, in exchange for genetic test orders, be considered an illegal kickback or remuneration? Could the complementary genetic counseling services provided to patients be considered “white-coat” marketing? 

The answer to that question may depend on if there can be a monetary value assigned to provision of genetic counseling services. And, since genetic counselors aren’t recognized under federal CMS as reimbursable, it is possible that there is no clear assignable value for genetic counseling services that would be considered a remuneration by CMS.     

Genetic counselors are often leaving clinical positions for higher paying positions with industry, and healthcare organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their own locally hired staff. This taken with the fact that healthcare systems have difficulty getting reimbursed for independent genetic counselors who are on staff with their organization, offers of complementary lab-provided genetic counseling bundled up with ease in test ordering are appealing. Labs see marketing by genetic counselors as a powerful sales tool to increase genetic test orders and offer genetic counselors attractive positions in terms of pay and other benefits. And then labs make deals with hospitals, clinics, and healthcare organizations to offer full service genetic healthcare solutions by labs that want to be the one stop shop. With companies that have an interest in selling more and more tests, and healthcare systems having a hard time retaining genetic counselors or getting reimbursed for their services, we will likely see automated processes constructed by the labs to make recommendations about test orders.

I believe genetic counselors can offer excellent services regardless of who employs them. I know that many lab-employed genetic counselors are working hard and taking great care of their patients. And I believe that the tools that the companies provide do have the potential to expand access to genetic testing. What worries me though is that this expansion of testing may not ultimately be what is best for patients and will cost the healthcare system (and thus all of us) greatly. As this landscape continue to shift, with genetic counseling being offered as an incentive to promote test orders of specific test brands, the practice of independent genetic counseling services as we have known them may soon vanish. Our ability to provide unbiased counseling that allows patients to make informed choices about what is best for them (which may not always be a genetic test) and our ability to select that best test, regardless of testing laboratory, will be a thing of the past.

Legislation has been introduced that would allow for genetic counselors to be reimbursed by Medicare, Access to Genetic Counselor Services Act of 2021 H.R. 2144 and S.1450. Medicare recognition of the genetic counseling profession is crucial to ensuring access to independent services. Please consider contacting your representatives and senators to voice your support of these important bills. Learn more here.

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by | August 5, 2019 · 11:36 PM

How Much Is That DNA Test In The Window, The One With The Waggely Price?

The recent stories about Medicare fraud and genetic testing have been pretty awful. Taking advantage of older people in order to scam the government…. well, what can you say? There’s a cheater born every minute and they are doing their best, or, really, their worst, to turn honest people into feeling like suckers.

Moral outrage aside, the stories got me to thinking about how unsure I am about the costs of genetic testing and how it gets billed to patients and insurers. Important point – I am not suggesting that reputable labs are flimflammers or hucksters. I am forever grateful to labs for their efforts in working with patients’ health insurers to determine coverage. I understand that pricing structure and billing are complicated even for professionals who spend their whole life doing it. Labs should make as much legitimate profit as they can. Sometimes the eligibility and testing guidelines are not so clear. I was born – but not yesterday.*  I just don’t know how it gets done and how the rules and regulations are navigated, at least in my narrow world of cancer genetics, though I suspect it is a problem in other specialties too. I’ve tried to become an informed user but it is a dense subject.  I feel as clueless as Buzz Lightyear (or, as Woody sometimes calls him, Buzz Light Beer). Genetics is easy in comparison. So I have questions.

I understand that each lab negotiates prices with each private health insurer and that the specifics are sort of Top Secret. But why are the negotiated prices for essentially the same test so different for each lab and insurer? Surely insurers are not so incompetent that they don’t realize this. They too are looking to be as profitable as they can be. All else being equal, shouldn’t insurers negotiate about the same price with Labs A, B, and C?  And if Lab D doesn’t like the price, well tough on them and they can be  relegated to the dreaded status of  “nonpreferred lab.”

Then there’s Medicare. Medicare rules vary a bit by region and are potentially negotiable in particular instances. But Medicare guidelines make it clear that usually patients must have a diagnosis such as breast or ovarian cancers (and in some situations also need to meet family history criteria) for testing to be covered. Some labs will not bill Medicare for patients who do not meet criteria and charge patients an out of pocket amount consistent with what they would have charged Medicare if it was a covered service. Other labs will bill Medicare and appear to eat whatever Medicare does not cover. Is it all a matter of different interpretations of ambiguous bureaucratic wording? And is it an illegal inducement if a lab offers free genetic counseling along with testing?

When insurance is bypassed and  a patient pays out of pocket how is it that the charge to the patient for more or less the same gene panel across labs can range from $250 to ~$2,000? Depending on which lab you use, patients can even get a panel for fifty bucks if they are “fortunate” enough to have a pathogenic variant segregating in their family. Or the patient at risk for a specific familial pathogenic variant could get the gene in question sequenced, but not a panel, for free, if testing is ordered within 90 days of the relative’s test. Or that same patient could just be tested for the specific variant and pay around $400-$500 out of pocket. If you have prostate cancer, or certain other genetic conditions, you can get a panel test at no charge because the testing is “sponsored” by a separate lab, usually from Pharma, with whom de-identified data may be shared (is it still possible to deidentify DNA anymore?).

I am all for removing financial and other barriers to genetic testing and counseling. I work hard at making sure my patients pay the lowest possible price for a quality test. I understand the need for research and cooperation between labs to develop new treatments. And it can be cut-throat competition out there where everyone’s trying to hack off a big chunk of market share. For sure, many of these issues are symptoms of the crazy health care system and spending in the US. At the same time, I wonder whether my pursuit of making sure that my patients  get coverage for their genetic testing is blinding me to problems with billing and charging. I do not want to cross any ethical or legal lines and I don’t want put my patients in financial jeopardy.

Perhaps the Good Readers of this blog are willing to share their insights and stories. Please don’t name names or try to vilify a particular lab; keep it de-identified. We can air it out collegially and constructively.

  • – I admit that I stole this great line from Season 2 of the Showtime series The Chi.

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by | April 23, 2018 · 12:12 AM

Is Test Uptake A Good Measure of Genetic Counseling Effectiveness? I Don’t Think So

The last few years have seen a growing trend for patients to undergo genetic testing without first seeing a genetic counselor or other genetic specialist. As I have commented before, genetic counselors are no longer the gatekeepers of genetic testing. Anyone can obtain DNA analysis through non-genetics specialists or any health care provider, on Amazon.com and other internet sites, and at their workplaces (which, honestly, makes me very uneasy; it is going to be awfully difficult for some employers to keep their noses out of their employees’ genetic information and it may provide an opportunity to chisel away at the protections afforded by GINA). Many genetic counselors have accepted this as a fact of life, even if we are not altogether comfortable with it.

Historically, the genetic counseling profession has done a poor job of demonstrating its value to the health care system. Our importance seemed pretty obvious to us and because we didn’t have much in the way of competition we were never strongly motivated to undertake large scale studies to prove our worth.

Comparative studies are starting to address the value of pre-test counseling by a genetic counselor, particularly in the field of hereditary cancer genetic testing. This as a good thing.  Still, it bothers me if studies claim that genetic counseling is failing patients because fewer people undergo genetic testing if they need to see a genetic counselor first. Sure, genetic testing should be readily available to those who need it, and barriers need to be removed. If seeing a genetic counselor turns out to be one of those barriers, then we need to do something about that. But test uptake may not always be in the best interests of patients.

For example, the most common reason an unaffected patient declines genetic testing after seeing me for hereditary cancer counseling is that, for the moment, they are the “wrong” person to test to most accurately determine their hereditary cancer risks. Even though the patient may technically meet standard criteria for genetic testing, they may still not be the best person to test within the context of their specific family history. Not undergoing genetic testing is not due to a lack of timely access to me, the cost of my services, or me somehow talking them out of testing. Instead, after reviewing their family history, it turns out that testing their mother with breast cancer or their brother with colon cancer is the most appropriate person to test before deciding if the patient and other unaffected relatives should undergo testing. If that affected relative has a normal genetic test result, then testing my patient and other relatives is usually a waste of money.

It is also difficult to interpret a negative test result in a family where a mutation has not already been identified. Now, I am a grizzled veteran of the Family Dynamics Wars, and I realize that sometimes that affected relative is deceased or just not willing to undergo testing, and you have to make do with the realities of the situation at hand. And, of course, this argument does not apply to testing patients who have been diagnosed with cancer (although it may apply in situations where patients meet NCCN guidelines but not their insurer’s criteria for coverage, but an affected relative does meet their insurer’s criteria). Still, testing an affected relative should be utilized whenever feasible because it is clinically and economically the most effective strategy. Therefore, if a study finds that test uptake is increased when patients do not first see a genetic counselor, the researchers are obliged to demonstrate that this is not simply due to more cases of the “wrong” person being tested or the providers not willing to take the time to work with the extended family.

Along these same lines, in many situations, even genetic test results of an affected relative are often uninformative for risk assessment. Such families may still need to be followed as high risk, with screening and risk reducing protocols based on family history and clinician judgment. Effectiveness studies therefore need to investigate whether there are differences in clinical recommendations provided to patients who see a genetic counselor compared to those who do not.

Studies of genetic counseling vs. no genetic counseling also need to provide data on patient adherence to screening and other risk reduction guidelines. Increased test uptake is not particularly helpful if patients do not have the motivation or wherewithal to undergo breast MRI, salpingo-oophorectomy, join the Annual Colonoscopy For Life Club, or whatever else is recommended. Other outcomes that effectiveness studies should address include communication of test results to family members, interpretation of variants of uncertain significance, and patients’ psychological adaptation to their risk status. I imagine many of you reading this posting can suggest additional outcomes that need to be addressed.

My other concern about reduced genetic counselor involvement with pre-test counseling is that “counseling” will eventually be reduced to a pamphlet or a brief video, perhaps provided by the testing lab itself. This is already a major concern with how NIPT is presented to pregnant women, and I can see it becoming a problem in other areas of genetic testing. No matter how earnestly labs may claim that their educational material is not a subtle sales pitch, they are only human and can easily be blinded by their business needs. This is an area where GCs can develop better and less biased educational materials.

If research demonstrates that other genetic testing delivery models are more effective than, or at least non-inferior to (non-inferior sounds like a back-handed compliment,doesn’t it?), the traditional approach of First See A GC Before Your Test, then the genetic counseling profession should re-focus itself and use our many other skills to work towards improving patients’ lives and the medical care system. Besides, I have never liked conflating genetic counseling with genetic testing.

I do worry, though, that either the research will not be conducted, or that, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, market forces will dictate testing strategies. I am not concerned that it would portend the end of the genetic counseling profession. Genetic counselors are forever expanding their professional roles, and in fact have continually reinvented themselves since, well, we first invented ourselves in the 1970s. Like David Bowie, we never stood still and as soon as you had us pinned down as Ziggy Stardust, all of a sudden we were Aladdin Sane, and already sprouting within him are the seeds of The Thin White Duke (well, okay, it’s a stretch comparing genetic counselors to David Bowie, but you get my point). What matters is that all patients affected with or at risk for hereditary disorders receive the most competent and compassionate care delivered effectively, equitably, and timely.

Bobbin Sane
(Graphic by Emily Singh)

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by | July 4, 2017 · 10:42 PM

Genetic Counseling ≠ Genetic Testing

I know that I am old and curmudgeonly. I acknowledge that my musical tastes and my concept of genetic counseling are hopelessly stuck in the 20th century. I sense in a frighteningly helpless way that my generation of genetic counselors is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the profession. It is like watching the air slowly leak out of my inflatable raft in the middle of a swift flowing river and realizing I don’t have a lifejacket. If you press me on it and buy me a few drinks, I will let slip out an admission that DNA analysis technologies like ion semiconductor sequencing and pyrosequencing are incomprehensible magic to me. I feel like I have become a visitor in my home country and I can barely speak the native tongue anymore.

So this paradox might sound like a useless warning flare fired from a sinking vessel before it goes under, a futile attempt to alert my younger upstream genetic counseling colleagues who are new to navigating these tricky waters: I love genetic testing; I hate genetic testing.

Genetic counselors and genetic testing have grown hand in hand since the early 1970s. At least in the US, one would not have flourished without the other. Amniocentesis, CVS, carrier screening, maternal serum screening, ultrasound, DNA sequencing, microarrays, and other genetic testing advances have all been ushered into medical practice by the genetic counseling profession. The tests generated a need for our unique skill sets along with the security of employment and the financial wherewithal to support our positions. Without genetic testing, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So what’s to complain about, even for a complainer like me?

Well, I have two related complaints. My first complaint is the ever-expanding list of genetic tests that we feel obliged to offer our patients in prenatal, oncology, and other settings. Don’t get me wrong – I think genetic testing can be incredibly valuable from both a medical and a psychological perspective. But I wind up spending way too much valuable counseling time highlighting the differences between Panel A and Panel B and the relative merits of this lab versus that lab. And, oh, by the way, many of the genes included on these panels are largely irrelevant to your particular clinical concerns. I hear similar plaints from some of my colleagues in prenatal – this carrier test for 75 conditions or that one for 200 conditions, or this prenatal screen versus that prenatal screen.

It is often not clear to me why some of these tests are part of clinical practice to begin with. Probably a variety of forces are behind it – the push from labs to offer more tests and to compete with other labs; the common trait of genetic counselors to be early adopters of new technologies; trying to show that we are at the cutting edge of genetics; our obsession with offering ALL options to ALL comers; demands from patients and referring physicians; worry that if we don’t offer the shiniest, newest products our patient population will go shopping at the next medical center down the road, or Heaven forbid, shop online; and a nagging fear of being sued or at the very least of providing sub-standard care. As I have written about previously, sometimes genetic tests became standard of care before they were thoroughly vetted, evaluated, and debated.

Which leads me to my second complaint. There is a tendency, sometimes overtly and sometimes silently, to conflate genetic testing and genetic counseling. Yeah, sure, genetic testing is an important part of what many of us do, but my job title says counselor, not tester. For some genetic counselors, testing is not even part of their job. We educate, provide clinical expertise to other care providers, and participate in research. There are other services we provide to our patients, not the least of which should be an intense psychological, personal, and occasionally angst-filled exploration of why patients might even want testing to begin with, never mind which test they want. We are there to support and work with them when no testing was done, when testing is irrelevant, or when testing was done in the past and we are helping them adapt to their new medical and emotional status. Let’s look at what your worries and fears are, and why you are in my office to begin with. What has it meant for your life that you or your child or your sister have this condition? What resources do you need? How have your loved ones been supportive or not of you? What are your health care and life goals? Or bigger picture questions such as what are the medical, economic, and social impacts of genetic disease?

At times I think that genetic counseling for psychiatric conditions is the last pure form of genetic counseling – reliable genetic testing is not available for most psychiatric conditions, so you are “forced” to rely on your counseling and clinical skills. Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but you catch my drift. I remember my long time colleague Vickie Venne once saying to me that cancer genetic counseling became a lot less interesting to her once BRCA testing became available. While not denying the many benefits of BRCA testing and how it has helped save lives, there is a measure of wisdom in Vickie’s statement.

As a profession, we should extol and support our role in ordering and interpreting genetic testing. But we, or at least I, don’t want testing to be our defining activity. Yes, as one of our skill sets, we are pretty damn good at it. But let’s not forget that it is a counseling session, not an Informed Consent session or a sales pitch. We should boast more about our abilities to help patients make sense of genetic disease for their lives in a psychologically meaningful way, and testing is only one means of achieving this goal. Genetic counselors are not Genetic Testers; Genetic Counseling is not Genetic Testing.

 

 

 

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by | November 21, 2016 · 8:23 AM

Summing Up the Consequences of Election 2016: 3 Things That Could Change the Practice of Genetic Counseling

It’s been two weeks, and everyone is sick of hot takes on Life in Trump’s America and What Is the Worst Thing That Could Happen? (um, I’m going with nuclear war, but take your pick). I know, I’m sick of it too. But elections have consequences, and, like climate scientists and immigration lawyers, we need to put some thought into what this could mean for our field.

 

The potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act is a concern for everyone working in health care, as is the threatened dismantling of Medicare. Possibly, critics of the ACA will discover that it is easier to campaign than to govern, and that voting to take away health care from tens of millions of people isn’t as much fun as it was in the good old days when they had the safety net of a presidential veto. But hey I’ve always been a Pollyanna. Too cheerful, that’s me.

 

Point one: prepare to practice in a climate where there is more inequality of access.

 

Chances are, prenatal genetics will be affected by an empowered and emboldened anti-abortion movement.   A president has some limited ability to make access to abortion more difficult through executive orders – President Bush signed regulations that gave everyone in the hospital, including orderlies and cleaning staff, the right to decline to do their job in cases involving abortion – but the main issue is the Supreme Court, where as president Trump will get an opportunity to redefine the balance of right and left if and when any of the reliable supporters of reproductive rights leaves the bench. Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns 84 on March 15th and I know millions of people join me in wishing her a happy birthday and many, many happy returns. The Court’s other octagenarian, Anthony Kennedy, has been behind decisions that chipped away at abortion rights, but has also declined several opportunities to overturn Roe v Wade, and anyone replacing him would almost certainly be more explicitly anti-abortion.

 

When asked last week on Sixty Minutes what would happen if Roe v Wade were overturned, Trump said that control of abortion law would then revert to the states, and that women who wanted an abortion might have to “go to another state.” This is correct (shocking but true) and you can make your own determination about the relative impact that would have on affluent and educated women  versus poor women, and teenagers, and other vulnerable parties.

 

The more complicated truth is that Roe v Wade is not going to disappear overnight, although there is a real and important long term threat. Should further changes create a Supreme Court majority ideologically opposed to abortion, they will have to wait until an appropriate case arises to make any changes. State lawmakers would no doubt be happy to present them with a test case, but making laws takes time, and then there are challenges and lower court decisions and demonstrations and pundits talking on the news before SCOTUS makes an actual decision. Even then, there is the hope that one or another of the anti-abortion faction hesitates to overturn 40+ years of precedent (See? You thought I was joking when I said I was an optimist).

 

A recent Supreme Court decision disallowing TRAP laws (targeted restriction of abortion providers) will stand, and so does the coalition that voided them, at least for now. For the moment, this should limit the chronic deterioration of access to abortion in Southern and Midwestern states that we have seen over the past decade. I believe it remains important to monitor changes that adversely affect our patients’ ability to obtain an abortion related to genetic findings, including decreased coverage, increased cost, logistical obstacles and changes that necessitate travel.

 

Point two: be vigilant about the threat to reproductive rights, but don’t expect dramatic changes in the near term.

 

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: there is evidence to suggest that prenatal testing itself is likely to be a target of the anti-abortion movement. In fact, it already is. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a directive in 2009 that forbids prenatal diagnosis “if undertaken with the intention of aborting an unborn child with a serious defect.” This decree limits the use of prenatal testing in some Catholic hospitals, a growing segment that includes one in six hospital beds in the country today. Many Catholic institutions including schools and hospitals refuse to pay for insurance plans that cover prenatal testing, restricting availability for all their employees, regardless of their own beliefs.  Other employers with an anti-abortion agenda could do the same thing.

 

More evidence that prenatal testing is on the radar screen of the anti-abortion movement: state laws have been advocated, and in two instances passed, that specifically forbid women from seeking a termination for reasons of genetic defect. These laws don’t get a lot of ink because they are a) unconstitutional (under Roe) and b) virtually impossible to enforce, since they require a prosecutor to prove motivation. This doesn’t mean they are not important. They were written by people whose agenda it is to limit abortion by any means, but they were chosen as a vehicle because they tap into a larger uneasiness about prenatal diagnosis.

 

The laws may not be enforceable, but they are chilling. Abortion is already medicine’s stepchild. Why would doctors or hospital administrators be eager to offer a procedure where they have to think twice about whether or not they could get in legal trouble? And the laws show an intent that could be more fully realized through other means. You may not be able to prove a woman’s intent in seeking an abortion, but you can certainly document a counselor’s intent if he or she offers the option of termination after a prenatal diagnosis. Will we see attempts to limit what can say to our patients? If this seems impossible to you, consider that 35 states currently have script laws detailing what a woman must be told before she can have an abortion, and a number of those require providers to give inaccurate and misleading information. In 6 states, women must be ‘informed’ that personhood begins at conception. In 5 states, women must be ‘informed’ that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. If they can require us to lie to patients, don’t rule out the possibility that they can forbid us to speak.

 

Advances in prenatal testing are revolutionary.   NIPS is the fastest growing medical test in the history of medical tests. We will continue to see changes that widen the scope of what we can diagnose prenatally and improve our ability to predict outcomes more accurately, and at an earlier phase in pregnancy.  This is going to reduce the incidence of a whole range of genetic conditions — for those who use the  test. But improvements in prenatal diagnosis don’t improve access; in fact, improvements in prenatal diagnosis are fueling the debate over what types of prenatal testing are acceptable. If the courts and the politicians and the public don’t accept the idea that pregnant women have a right to prenatal testing as a part of normal prenatal care, then laws and limits to insurance reimbursement may put it out of reach of many Americans.

 

If prenatal testing is only available people who have enough money, or the right education, or live in certain parts of the country, it is not just unfair to individuals but fundamentally changes the societal impact of offering the tests. The necessary consequence of offering prenatal diagnosis and the option to choose only to some people, is that the birth of a child with a genetic defect or disease will gradually change from being something that can happen to anyone to something that only happens to ‘some people’. Don’t we already see this happening to some extent with Down syndrome? People are right to think hard about the potential consequences of prenatal diagnosis, but restricting prenatal testing so that access is unequal doesn’t limit the harm, it multiplies the harm.

 

Point three: we need to make the case that genetic testing is a part of good prenatal care and that every pregnant woman has a right to it, if she chooses.

 

There are other issues to consider but these three jump out at me as points of concern for genetic counseling practice as we move forward with a new administration. What can we do?  Hope for the best. Make our own spaces – schools, clinics, workplaces – into welcoming and inclusive environments for those who don’t feel safe in the current climate. Be vigilant, and bring changes that affect patient care to public attention. Talk to other counselors. Talk to me; I would love to hear your take and your stories.

 

 

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