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AMA Announces New Add-On Digital Pathology Codes
The American Medical Association (AMA) CPT Editorial Panel hasannounced 13 new digital pathology add-on codes effective on January1, 2023. The new digital pathology Category III CPT codes will be usedto report additional clinical staff work and service requirements...
California Lab Owners Indicted For $214 Million Medicare Test Fraud
The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted Imran Shams and Lourdes Navarro, both 63 and owners of Matias Clinical Laboratory (Baldwin Park, CA), for their alleged roles in a $214 million Medicare billing fraud scheme. The DOJ says that the married couple arranged for...
MT Salaries Skyrocket As Labs Struggle To Find MTs
Today, laboratories are offering salaries and sign-on bonuses to medical technologists (MTs) that have never been seen before. In the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, lab clients are paying salaries as high as $150,000 and $180,000 to attract staff MTs with...
Castle Biosciences To Buy AltheaDx For Up To $140 Million
Castle Biosciences (Friendswood, TX) has agreed to acquire AltheaDx (San Diego, CA) for $65 million in initial consideration consisting of $32.5 million in cash plus $32.5 million in stock. In addition, Castle could pay up to $75 million more in cash and stock if...
Biopsy Client Database for Pathologists
Laboratory Economics is offering a database of 50,000+ specialty physicians and ambulatory surgery centers that perform biopsies that lead to pathology referrals. The database includes annual Medicare Part B biopsy volumes for 2019 plus estimated overall biopsy...
Quest Diagnostics Pays $85 Million For Labtech
The latest 10K annual report from Quest Diagnostics revealed that the company paid $85 million for its acquisition of Labtech Diagnostics (Anderson, SC). The deal, which closed on December 13, 2021, included cash consideration of $80 million and contingent...
Labcorp Completes Acquisition of PGDx
Labcorp completed its previously announced (see LE, January 2022) acquisition of Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. (PGDx-Baltimore, MD) on February 18. PGDx markets an FDA-cleared comprehensive tumor profiling test, PGDx ELIO tissue complete, that is covered by...
PathGroup Acquires Pathology Consultants in South Carolina
PathGroup (Brentwood, TN) acquired Pathology Consultants Inc. (PCI-Greenville, SC) for an undisclosed sum in January. PCI operates a CAP-accredited pathology lab in Greenville, South Carolina. It has approximately 100 employees, including 31 pathologists. PCI’s...
BioReference Labs Goes Live With Digital Pathology Plus AI
OPKO’s BioReference Labs (Elmwood Park, NJ) went live in December with new whole-slide imaging scanners from Leica Biosciences (Buffalo Grove, IL). The scanners have been integrated with a digital pathology solution, PathFlow, made by Gestalt Diagnostics (Spokane,...
CDx Diagnostics Leads In Digital Pathology
CDx Diagnostics (Suffern, NY), which specializes in oral, esophageal, and laryngeal cancer testing, is by far the biggest digital pathology lab as measured by volume of Part B claims for CPT 88361. CDx was paid for 55,082 Part B tests for CPT 88361 (including combined...
Exact Sciences Acquires PreventionGenetics For $190 Million
Exact Sciences (Madison, WI) paid $190 million, including 50% in Exact common stock and 50% in cash, for PreventionGenetics (Marshfield, WI) in early January. PreventionGenetics operates a CLIA-certified lab that performs proprietary next-gen sequencing tests,...
Labcorp To Buy PGDx For $575 Million
Labcorp (Burlington, NC) has agreed to acquire Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. (PGDx-Baltimore, MD) for $450 million in cash at closing plus up to an additional $125 million based on future performance milestones. The transaction is expected to close in the first...
Progenity Sells Lab Business To Northwest Pathology
Progenity Inc. (San Diego, CA) has sold its lab business, Avero Diagnostics (Irving, TX), to Northwest Pathology (Bellingham, WA) for $10.9 million in cash. The sale of Avero Diagnostics is expected to reduce Progenity’s annual operating expenses by approximately $28...
Sonic Buys ProPath
Sonic Healthcare (Sonic) acquired 100% of ProPath Services (Dallas, TX) for an undisclosed price on December 17, 2021. ProPath had been one of the largest pathologist-owned anatomic pathology labs in the nation. ProPath’s annual revenue is approximately $110 million....
Toxicology Labs Average $475 Per Medicare Patient
.The top 25 independent toxicology lab companies received an average of $475 of revenue per Medicare patient they served in 2019, according to data analyzed by Laboratory Economics from the Medicare Part B program. The biggest toxicology lab in the country is Aegis...
Arkansas Lab Owner Indicted in $100 Million Billing Fraud
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas has indicted Billy Joe Taylor, age 42, for an alleged scheme that billed Medicare for over $100 million dollars in fraudulent lab test claims between February 2017 and May 2021. Taylor is the owner of several...
MD Labs To Pay Up To $16 Million To Resolve Fraudulent Billing Allegations
Nevada-based MD Spine Solutions (doing business as MD Labs) and its two owners have agreed to pay up to $16 million to settle allegations that MD Labs submitted false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The co-owners, Denis...
Enzo Biochem Hires New CEO; Investors Push For More Change
Hamid Erfanian, age 52, has become Chief Executive Officer Enzo Biochem (New York City) effective November 8. Erfanian was most recently Chief Commercial Officer of Euroimmun, an IVD manufacturer owned by PerkinElmer (Waltham, MA). Former CEO Elazar Rabbani, PhD, age...
ARUP And Quest Raise Minimum Hourly Wage To $15
ARUP Laboratories (Salt Lake City, UT) says that it will increase its minimum hourly wage to $15 effective November 27. All new hires and approximately 600 employees who currently earn less than the new minimum will be paid $15 per hour or more. In addition, about...
Khani To Step Down As ACLA President
The American Clinical Laboratory Assn. (Washington, DC) has announced that Julie Khani is resigning as President effective November 26. Khani, who has been ACLA President since January 1, 2017, has accepted a position as Vice President of Government Affairs at Hologic...
NYSCLA Meeting Highlights:
PAMA, Pandemic Response, Shortages & AI
Following cancellation last year due to the pandemic, the New York State Clinical Laboratory Association (NYSCLA) held this year’s annual meeting in a well-spaced conference room in Albany, October 6-7. Approximately 125 lab directors, managers, pathologists and...
Ibex To Focus On U.S. Market For AI-Assisted Pathology
Ibex Medical Analytics (Tel Aviv, Israel and Boston, MA) has hired Douglas Clark, MD, as its Chief Medical Officer, Americas. Ibex also announced that Joseph Mossel, its co-founder and CEO, is relocating to the United States to lead the company’s expansion in North...
Tips For Negotiating Your Lab’s Next Reference Testing Contract
Reference (aka send-out) testing expenses average between 5% and 10% of the overall budget at most hospital laboratory departments. “Everybody thinks they are getting a good deal, but most have not wrung out the lowest prices available from their reference lab,” notes...
Cancer Diagnoses Declined Sharply During First Year of Pandemic
New diagnoses of eight common cancers (prostate, breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, cervical, gastric and esophageal) significantly declined during most of the first 13 months of the pandemic (March 2020-March 2021), according to a study by Quest Diagnostics...
The Pandemic Intensified Chronic Lab Worker Shortage
There are approximately 338,000 clinical laboratory technologist and technician jobs in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hospitals account for 47% of these jobs; independent labs, 20%; physician offices, 9%; schools and universities, 6%; and...
New Law For Medi-Cal Aimed At Eliminating Retroactive Recoupments
On July 27, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a comprehensive health care budget trailer bill (AB 133), which prevents future retroactive reimbursement reductions and recoupments from labs and pathology groups that occur due to “a lack of timeliness in Medi-Cal...
New Lab Formations Continue To Boom
The extraordinary demand for Covid-19 PCR, antigen and antibody testing continues to fuel a record number of new CLIA-certified lab formations, according to the latest CMS data analyzed by Laboratory Economics. More than 7,000 new CLIA lab certificates were issued in...
Medical Technologist Shortages Widespread
Medical technologists (MTs) have been in chronic short supply for at least the past 20 years. In the past, labs have used sign-on bonuses ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 to attract MTs. Last month, Laboratory Economics highlighted Alverno Laboratories (Hammond, IN) use...
Capital Digestive To Open Bigger Pathology Lab
Capital Digestive Care (Silver Spring, MD) has announced plans to relocate and expand its pathology lab to Silver Spring, Maryland. The new lab will be 21,000 square feet and is expected to open in early 2022. In addition, the new lab will become a Roche Diagnostics...
Alverno Labs To Implement Artificial Intelligence For Pathology
Alverno Laboratories (Hammond, IN), which transitioned to digital pathology in 2019 when it implemented Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution, now says it will add artificial intelligence to aid its pathologists in cancer diagnosis. Alverno will use the Galen AI...
Fulgent Genetics Acquires CSI Laboratories For $50+ Million
Fulgent Genetics Inc. (Temple City, CA) has acquired Cytometry Specialists Inc. (Alpharetta, GA), which does business as CSI Laboratories, for $50 million in cash plus up to $10 million more in potential future milestone payments. CSI Labs was founded by its Chairman...
UnitedHealthcare Delays Lab Test Registry Protocol Indefinitely
After several postponements, UnitedHealthcare (UHC) announced on July 1 that it would delay implementing its planned clinical and pathology Laboratory Test Registry Protocol until further notice. UHC’s Laboratory Test Registry Protocol would have required in-network,...
Spotlight Interview With Paige CEO Leo Grady
Paige (New York, NY) was founded by pathologists and scientists from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2017. Paige develops artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems that help diagnose cancer. In early 2019, thecompany hired Leo Grady, PhD, as Chief Executive...
XIFIN To Open East Coast Office, Expand Into Radiology Billing
The revenue cycle management firm XIFIN Inc. (San Diego, CA) is opening a new 32,500-square-foot office in Charleston, South Carolina. The new office is slated to open in early August. XIFIN plans to hire over 150 positions in South Carolina over the next two years,...
Alverno Labs Offering Up To $10K Hiring Bonus For MT/MLTs
Alverno Laboratories (Hammond, IN) is offering big sign-on bonuses as it tries to fill hundreds of open jobs. Alverno employs roughly 2,116 people and has about 288 openings, including 29 positions at multiple locations for midnight medical technologist (MT) and...
Progenity To Close Genetics Lab To Conserve Cash
Progenity Inc. (San Diego, CA) says it will close its genetics lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to conserve cash and will now focus on its drug delivery technologies and therapeutics. Progenity’s Michigan lab specializes in noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) to determine...
Apollo To Buy Sun Clinical Labs For $4 Million
Apollo Medical Holdings (ApolloMed-Alhambra, CA) has agreed to purchase a majority stake in Sun Clinical Laboratories (Sun Labs-El Monte, CA) for $4 million in cash. The deal is expected to close within three months. Sun Labs is a small independent routine clinical...
Quest Completes Acquisition of Mercy’s Outreach Lab Business
Quest Diagnostics has completed its previously announced acquisition of the clinical lab outreach business of Mercy (St. Louis, MO) in an all-cash asset transaction (see LE, March 2021). The purchase price has not yet been disclosed. Cain Brothers served as Mercy’s...
America’s Fastest-Growing Labs
Phlebxpress (Temecula, CA) grew its Medicare Part B test service volume by 202% per year between 2015 and 2018, making it the fastest-growing independent lab company in America over the three-year period. Phlebxpress is a mobile phlebotomy company headquartered in...
Battle Continues Between Enzo And Harbert Discovery Fund
Alabama-based investment management firm Harbert Discovery Fund continues to feud with Elazar Rabbani, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Enzo Biochem (New York City) over the future of the clinical lab and diagnostic products company. Harbert is an activist investor fund that...
Volume Surge Expected For High-Priced Covid-19 Test Panels
With the flu season underway, more test panels are becoming available that test for Covid-19 plus other respiratory viruses, including influenza A/B and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Labs have begun to submit the combo PCR tests codes for Covid-19, although...
Top 25 Hospital Outreach Labs for 2019
The table below lists the top 25 hospital-based outreach labs as measured by Medicare Part B CLFS and Physician Fee Schedule anatomic pathology test payments in 2019. Overall, the top 25 hospital labs had $169 million in Part B payments, which was down approximately...
CorePlus Details Its Use Of Artificial Intelligence For Prostate Cancer
Last month, LE briefly noted that CorePlus Servicios Clínicos y Patológicos LLC (Carolina, Puerto Rico) had become the first independent lab in the Americas to begin using artificialintelligence-assisted (AI) pathology for prostate cancer diagnostics. This month wegot...
Survey Reveals Huge Gap Between “Have” and “Have Not” Labs
The latest Laboratory Economics Covid-19 Survey of Labs showed that 71% of labs were currently performing Covid-19 PCR testing and another 3% planned to soon add this capability, while 26% were not doing this testing. Those labs that are performing Covid-19 PCR...
Spotlight Interview With Aegis Sciences CEO Frank Basile
Aegis Sciences Corp. (Nashville, TN) performs some 20 million toxicology tests per year, making it one of the nation’s largest toxicology labs. On April15, Aegis launched Covid-19 PCR testing with an initial capacity to perform up to 3,500 tests per day. Laboratory...
Publicly-Traded Lab Revenue Falls 1.4% In First-Half 2020
On a combined basis, 20 publicly-traded labs reported a revenue decrease of 1.4% to $9.8 billion during the first six months of 2020 (after adjusting for acquisitions), according to financial reports collected by Laboratory Economics. Among five national clinic al...
Spotlight Interview With PathGroup CEO Ben Davis
Originally founded by pathologists in 1965, PathGroup (Brentwood, TN) has grown to become the nation’s largest privately-held lab company. PathGroup, which currently has 2,200 employees, is owned by Pritzker Private Capital, company management and pathologists....
Quest Diagnostics Mid-Year 2020 Review
Quest Diagnostics (Madison, NJ) reported net income of $284 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, down 27.2% from $390 million in the same period for 2019. Overall, Quest’s reported half-year revenue was down 5.1% to $3.649 billion. Looking specifically at...
LabCorp Mid-Year 2020 Review
LabCorp (Burlington, NC) reported a net loss of $86 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, down from net income of $376 million in the same period for 2019. Overall, LabCorp’s reported half-year revenue was down by 1.4% to $5.593 billion. Looking specifically...
PC Rates For Key Pathology Services To Get 12% Cut
Medicare professional component (PC) reimbursement rates for most high-volume pathology services will be cut by 12% next year, according to the newly released Proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) for 2021. For example, the 2021 Medicare rate for the PC of...
Medi-Cal Seeks Approval To Slash Lab Rates
California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) has completed itslatest private-payer lab rate survey and is seeking federal approval to lowerMedi-Cal fee-for-service (FFS) rates for more than 60 high-volume lab and pathology services (effective retroactive to...
Top 25 Lab and Pathology Companies Receiving PRF Payments
Not surprisingly, Quest Diagnostics ($65 million) and LabCorp ($56 million) top the list in terms of highest PRF payments received by lab and pathology companies. Exact Sciences, including Genomic Health, received $23.5 million, while Sonic Healthcare, including...
BioReference Wins Lab Contract With Westchester Medical Center
OPKO’s BioReference Laboratories (Elmwood Park, NJ) has signed a long-term service contract with the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (Valhalla, NY) to provide inpatient lab administrative services, reference testing and outreach testing services. WMCHealth...
Majority Of NYC Nursing Home Employees Have Had Covid-19
BioReference Labs reports that Covid-19 antibody testing it performed on nursing home employees throughout New York State in May-June showed a 29% positivity rate. New York City nursing home employees were found to have the highest positivity rate (55%). During the...
Sweden’s Controversial Covid-19 Strategy
Sweden never imposed a strict lockdown to combat Covid-19, unlike most other countries. The only official rules put in place are a ban on gatherings of 50 people or more and a ban on visitors to nursing homes. The nation’s Chief Epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, MD,...
Medicare Sets Good Rates For Covid-19 Testing
CMS has been very fair when establishing reimbursement rates for Covid-19tests in an effort to encourage widespread diagnostic and antibody testing.Furthermore, private health plans are required to cover both diagnostic and antibody testing without member cost-sharing...
Covid-19 Situation Update At Five Laboratories
Viracor Eurofins Laboratories (Lee’s Summit, MO) has the capacity to perform 2,000 PCR-based Covid-19 tests per day; however, about 50% of that capacity is currently unused, according to Steven Kleiboeker, PhD, Vice President of Research and Development. Nationwide,...
LabCorp Reports First-Quarter Results
LabCorp reported a net loss of $317.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020, down from net income of $185.6 million in the same period a year ago; revenue was up 1.2% to $2.824 billion. A summary of key topics discussed by CEO Adam Schechter and CFO Glenn...
Encouraging News From Initial Covid-19 Prevalence Studies
Preliminary results from a growing number of antibody prevalence studies indicate that the Covid-19 virus has spread more widely and has a lower fatality rate than previously expected. Stanford University School of Medicine Between 48,000 and 81,000 residents in...
The CARES Act — Not Much In It For Labs
The enormous $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was signed into law on March 27, but provides little in direct relief to the nation’s laboratories. The American Clinical Laboratory Assn. (ACLA) had lobbied for $5 billion in new...