Behind the scenes of the rush to create mass Covid testing programs overnight SWAB is the story of how BioReference Laboratories—working with no roadmap, no federal guidance or support, and no prior pandemic experience—established processes to test every imaginable segment of the American public. BioReference rose to national prominence as the “first” on many COVID testing frontiers: New York’ s first drive-through testing site; the exclusive provider for the NBA “Bubble”; the exclusive testing provider for the NFL; the first to perform testing for New York City public schools; testing for the first cruise line (Royal Caribbean) to sail when the CDC order was lifted; the first to test thousands of fans for an NFL playoff game; and the first to develop large scale testing programs for testing thousands of people within one hour of special events. SWAB is the story of how Dr. Jon Cohen and his thousands of employees worked around the clock to create bespoke COVID mass testing programs from scratch literally overnight, addressing a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the process. It is a case study of crisis leadership, and a visceral, relatable read for anyone who felt a cotton swab almost reach their brain while taking a Covid-19 test.

These guidelines have been approved by the four organizations that make up the Cooperating Parties for the ICD-10-CM: the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), CMS, and NCHS. These guidelines are a set of rules that have been developed to accompany and complement the official conventions and instructions provided within the ICD-10-CM itself. The instructions and conventions of the classification take precedence over guidelines. These guidelines are based on the coding and sequencing instructions in the Tabular List and Alphabetic Index of ICD-10-CM, but provide additional instruction. Adherence to these guidelines when assigning ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes is required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The diagnosis codes (Tabular List and Alphabetic Index) have been adopted under HIPAA for all healthcare settings. A joint effort between the healthcare provider and the coder is essential to achieve complete and accurate documentation, code assignment, and reporting of diagnoses and procedures. These guidelines have been developed to assist both the healthcare provider and the coder in identifying those diagnoses that are to be reported. The importance of consistent, complete documentation in the medical record cannot be overemphasized. Without such documentation accurate coding cannot be achieved. The entire record should be reviewed to determine the specific reason for the encounter and the conditions treated.

In this issue of Clinics in Laboratory Medicine, guest editors Drs. Christopher P. Holstege and Joshua D. King bring their considerable expertise to the topic of COVID-19 Molecular Testing and Clinical Correlates. Top experts in the field cover key topics such as point-of-care molecular assays for SARS-CoV-2; strategies for scaling up SARS-CoV-2 molecular testing capacity; cycle threshold values from SARS-CoV-2 PCR assays; and more. - Contains 12 relevant, practice-oriented topics including analytic and clinical performance of major commercial SARS-CoV-2 PCR assays in the United States; isothermal assays for SARS-CoV-2 detection; rapid antigen assays for SARS-CoV-2; approaches to deployment of molecular testing for SARS-CoV-2 in resource-limited settings; and more. - Provides in-depth clinical reviews on COVID-19 molecular testing and clinical correlates, offering actionable insights for clinical practice. - Presents the latest information on this timely, focused topic under the leadership of experienced editors in the field. Authors synthesize and distill the latest research and practice guidelines to create clinically significant, topic-based reviews.