Quest To Buy Outreach Lab In Maine

by Jondavid Klipp | Jan 5, 2023 | Hospital Outreach Laboratory, Quest Diagnostics

Quest To Buy Outreach Lab In Maine

Quest Diagnostics has agreed to acquire certain outreach lab assets from
Northern Light Health (Brewer, ME), an integrated healthcare system,
in an all-cash transaction. In addition, Quest will manage nine of Northern
Light Health’s inpatient hospital labs, along with its cancer center lab at
Northern Light Cancer Care in Brewer, Maine.

Northern Light Health’s outreach lab services business does business as Northern Light Laboratory (formerly named Affiliated Laboratory Inc.). It has 225 employees and is based at a core laboratory in Bangor, Maine. It serves 250 physician practices throughout the region and provides
reference testing services to more than two dozen hospitals.

Northern Light Laboratory is operated as a hospital-owned independent lab. It collected $1.5 million of Medicare Part B Carrier allowed revenue from 135,489 allowed tests in 2020 (the latest year of available data). Laboratory Economics estimates that overall revenue for Northern Light Laboratory is between $10 million and $20 million per year.

Northern Light Health has a systemwide laboratory department budget of $88 million, according to hospital cost reports for 2021. Its largest inpatient lab is at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center (377 staffed beds), which has a lab department budget of $35 million per year.

Non-urgent routine clinical lab testing and reference testing now performed by Northern Light Laboratory will be shifted to Quest’s regional lab in Marlborough, Massachusetts (about 250 miles from Bangor). A Quest rapid response lab in the Bangor area and select Northern Light Health hospital labs will perform tests requiring rapid results.

Northern Light employees working in the labs will become Quest employees, and no one is being laid off, according to Northern Light spokesperson Suzanne Spruce.

In addition, Spruce says that the agreement with Quest will not affect anatomic pathology services that are now provided at Northern Light Health by Dahl-Chase Pathology Associates (Bangor, ME).

“This agreement will bring Quest scale in Maine. This market is largely a white space for Quest and the transaction makes strategic sense to both parties. It will create a low-cost consolidated lab in a state currently dominated by NorDx Laboratories,” observes David Nichols, President of
Nichols Management Group (York Harbor, ME).

Quest To Acquire Summa Health’s Outreach Lab Business

by Jondavid Klipp | Oct 18, 2022 | Hospital Outreach Laboratory, Lab Acquisition, Quest Diagnostics

Quest To Acquire Summa Health’s Outreach Lab Business

Quest Diagnostics (Secaucus, NJ) has agreed to acquire select assets of Summa Health’s (Akron, OH) clinical lab outreach business, which does business as LabCare Plus, in an all-cash transaction. Summa picked Quest as a buyer after a competitive bid. The purchase price has not been disclosed.

Summa Health operates four hospitals and a multi-specialty medical group with 300 physicians at 100 offices in northeast Ohio. Summa Health will continue to own and operate its hospital labs, which serve inpatient and hospital-based outpatient departments. In addition, Summa will maintain its pathology department and services.

Summa’s LabCare Plus outreach business is based at its flagship Summa Health System—Akron Campus (648 beds). LabCare Plus has 19 patient service centers in the greater Akron area. It generated $1.5 million in Medicare CLFS payments in 2021. Laboratory Economics estimates that the overall outreach business has revenue of $5-10 million per year.

Quest plans to shift the acquired outreach test volumes to its labs in Twinsburg, Ohio (22 miles north of Akron) and Pittsburgh (111 miles southeast).

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Quest Diagnostics Pays $85 Million For Labtech

by Jondavid Klipp | Mar 15, 2022 | Lab Acquisition, Labtech Diagnostics, Quest Diagnostics

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 consideration of $5 million dependent upon certain test volume goals. Labtech is an independent clinical lab specializing in allergy testing that serves physicians and patients primarily in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Labtech, which has 200 employees, was founded by its CEO/Owner Joseph Labash in 2011.

ARUP And Quest Raise Minimum Hourly Wage To $15

by Jondavid Klipp | Nov 15, 2021 | ARUP Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics

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 2,800 hourly employees who already earn more than $15 per hour also will get raises with the higher minimum hourly wage. ARUP has about 4,500 employees, most of whom work in University of Utah Research Park.

Effective November 7, Quest Diagnostics says that it will adjust its hourly rate to $15 for the small number of employees who were below that level. In addition, Quest will make a non-taxable payment ($500 for full-time employees and $250 for part-time and per diem) to approximately 47,500
employees to offset financial challenges due to the pandemic.

Finally, Quest noted that another year of pandemic pressures and travel restrictions have made it very difficult for many of its employees to take their paid time off (PTO). Therefore, Quest said it is providing a payout of most unused PTO for its hourly employees to ensure they don’t forfeit it at
the end of the year.

Recently, Labcorp also announced it was raising its minimum wage to $15 (see LE, September 2021).

Cancer Diagnoses Declined Sharply During First Year of Pandemic

by Jondavid Klipp | Sep 15, 2021 | COVID-19, Quest Diagnostics

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 published August 31 in JAMA Network Open, Oncology. It is believed to be the largest and most comprehensive analysis of cancer diagnosis rates during the pandemic.

Lockdown measures and fear of going to doctor’s offices and hospitals are believed to have led many people to put off preventative care like routine screenings that could have resulted in diagnosis of cancer during the first year of the pandemic, the study suggests.

The Quest study included 799,496 patients (45% women/55% men) with an average age of 68. Data over four time periods was analyzed: prepandemic, March to May 2020, June to October 2020, and November 2020 to March 2021.

Prepandemic, January 2019 to February 2020, the average monthly number of new diagnoses for the eight cancers was 32,407. During March to May 2020, the monthly average fell by 30% to 22,748 cases. It fell by 10% to 29,304 cases in the next period, June to October 2020. Finally, new cancer diagnoses fell 19% to an average 26,204 cases in the last period, November 2020 to March 2021.

Delayed cancer diagnosis can lead to more advanced disease, more aggressive and costly treatment, and worse outcomes, noted the Quest study.

ACLA Study Cites Emerging Crisis of Undiagnosed Diseases and Delayed Treatment
A separate study of Medicare claims data found that clinical lab test utilization overall fell by 18% from 2019 to 2020, even when taking into account the large volume of Covid-19 testing conducted in 2020. The study was sponsored by the American Clinical Laboratory Association and performed by Braid Forbes Research (Silver Spring, MD). The analysis compared the volume of CLFS tests for Medicare beneficiaries in the first nine months of 2020 to the volume of tests performed in the same period of 2019. Key findings included:

Cancer testing decreased by 31% on average across key tests, including:

• EGFR test volume for non-small cell lung cancer fell by 47%
• BRCA test volume for breast and ovarian cancer fell by 35%
• Prostate specific antigen (PSA) test volume fell by 16%

Diabetes testing decreased by 29% on average across key tests, including:

• A1c test volume fell by 20%
• Glucose test volume fell by 36%

Other tests seeing substantial volume declines included chronic kidney disease (-31%), liver disease (-23%), lipid panel (-22%) and drug testing (-21%).

Quest Completes Acquisition of Mercy’s Outreach Lab Business

by Jondavid Klipp | Jun 15, 2021 | Lab Acquisition, Quest Diagnostics

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 transaction advisor.

Under the deal, Mercy’s clinical lab outreach tests will transition to Quest’s full-service laboratory in Lenexa, Kansas. Mercy’s clinical lab outreach business currently operates from 29 hospital laboratories and two independent clinical laboratories serving providers and patients in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Mercy will continue to wholly own and operate its hospital laboratories for tests connected to inpatient and hospital-based outpatient services.