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XIFIN To Open East Coast Office, Expand Into Radiology Billing

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 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 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...

Spotlight Interview With PathGroup CEO Ben Davis

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 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 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

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

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...

Sweden’s Controversial Covid-19 Strategy

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

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...

LabCorp Reports First-Quarter Results

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...

The CARES Act — Not Much In It For Labs

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...

Why Were Hospital Labs Excluded From The Initial PAMA Survey?

Why Were Hospital Labs Excluded From The Initial PAMA Survey?

A former CMS official involved in drafting the initial Medicare rules that determined which labs must report their private-payer pricing data to CMS for calculating Medicare CLFS rates says that PAMA was specifically designed to exclude hospital labs. This flies in...

Quest Reports Full-Year 2019 Financial Results

Quest Reports Full-Year 2019 Financial Results

Quest Diagnostics reported net income of $858 million for full-year 2019, up from $736 million in 2018. Quest’s overall revenue increased by 2.6% to $7.726 billion, with acquisitions contributing more than 2% to revenue growth. Quest’s average revenue per requisition...

Spotlight Interview with OmniPathology CEO Mohammad Kamal

Spotlight Interview with OmniPathology CEO Mohammad Kamal

OmniPathology (Pasadena, CA) was formed in 2009 with an initial focus on gastrointestinal pathology. The lab has 15 employees, five of whom are pathologists. Laboratory Economics recently spoke with Founder and CEO Mohammad Kamal, MD. What areas does Omni Pathology...

PAMA Reporting Period Delay Is Welcome News For Labs

PAMA Reporting Period Delay Is Welcome News For Labs

On December 20, President Trump signed into law a spending package that included provisions of The LAB Act. The legislation delays the PAMAprivate-payer data reporting schedule by one year, in order to give more time for all labs, especially hospital outreach labs, to...

Shareholder Vote To Decide Enzo’s Fate

Shareholder Vote To Decide Enzo’s Fate

The activist hedge fund manager Harbert Management Corp. (Birmingham, AL) is seeking to replace two board members at Enzo Biochem (New York City) with its own nominees. A shareholder vote at Enzo’s annual meeting on January 31 will decide the matter. Harbert has...

Enzo Hires Investment Bank Lazard

Enzo Hires Investment Bank Lazard

Enzo Biochem (New York City) has hired the investment bank Lazard to assist in “strategic relationships and new venture creation.” This news comes as Harbert Management Corp. (Birmingham, AL) has purchased a 12% equity stake in Enzo and nominated two new independent...

More Executive Changes At Labcorp’s Diagnostic Division

More Executive Changes At Labcorp’s Diagnostic Division

After only a few days in the position, LabCorp Diagnostics’ CEO John Ratliff has resigned to take a top executive position at an unnamed company. Ratliff, age 59, had become head of LabCorp’s diagnostic testing business effective November 1. He had formerly been CEO...

Top 25 Independent Nursing Home Labs

Top 25 Independent Nursing Home Labs

There are approximately 75 independent lab companies across the United States that are focused on the nursing home market. The table below lists the top 25 companies as measured by their volume of Part B services for G0471 in 2017 (the latest year of available data)....

Exagen Raises $58 Million From IPO

Exagen Inc. (Vista, CA) completed an IPO on September 23, raising gross proceeds of $58 million from the sale of 4.14 million shares at $14 per share. Net proceeds were approximately $54 million after deducting the underwriting discounts and commissions and other IPO...

Harbert Pushes For Change At Enzo

Harbert Pushes For Change At Enzo

Funds managed by Harbert Management Corp. (HMC-Birmingham, AL) have purchased an 11.8% equity stake in Enzo Biochem Inc. (New York City) and nominated two new independent directors—Fabian Blank and Peter Clemens—to Enzo’s board. Enzo currently has a fivemember board...

uBiome Headed For Chapter 7 Liquidation

uBiome Headed For Chapter 7 Liquidation

UBiome Inc. (San Francisco), which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in early September, has moved to a liquidation under Chapter 7, after unsuccessful attempts to secure new loans or find a buyer. The company was founded in 2012 and had marketed its...

True Health Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

True Health Diagnostics (Frisco, TX) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 30, blaming CMS’s suspension of its Medicare payments since May 2017. In its bankruptcy filing, True Health said it had less than $50,000 of assets, and more than $100 million in...

ACLA Wins Appeals Court Decision; HHS Likely To Request Rehearing

ACLA Wins Appeals Court Decision; HHS Likely To Request Rehearing

On July 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the American Clinical Laboratory Assn. (ACLA) in its suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding implementation of the Protecting Access to Medicare...

Top 20 Medi-Cal Laboratories

Top 20 Medi-Cal Laboratories

The largest Medi-Cal lab provider is The Genetic Disease Screening Program (GDSP) of the California Department of Health, which received $29.5 million of Medi-Cal FFS payments in calendar year 2018, according to the latest available data from DHCS. The Genetic Disease...

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