Anew clinical lab being built by Nevada Health and Biosciences Laboratory in conjunction with University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC) is expected to open in early 2027. The 34,000-square-foot lab will initially employ about 35 people and will significantly expand UMC’s current test offerings. Laboratory Economics recently spoke with Deb LaCava, Administrative Director of Laboratory Services at UMC.

Tell me about the new Nevada Health and Biosciences Academic Laboratory.
It’s located in the Las Vegas Medical District and will significantly expand UMC’s capacity while supporting education, research and future transplant-related services. When we first open, we will be moving our molecular and microbiology labs from the main hospitals into that building and expanding both. We’re having a BSL-3 lab built into that facility, so that will expand our capacity in microbiology. We’ll also be bringing in toxicology and drug testing. We’ll have mass spec, and we also are planning an HLA lab for transplants.
What was the impetus for the new lab?
Medical care is lacking in Nevada compared to our neighboring states. A lot of patient testing must be sent out of state to reference labs, and that really delays patient care. Our new lab will get results to patients in a couple of hours instead of seven or eight days.
Where is the majority of testing done now?
Routine testing is generally performed in the hospital lab. More specialized tests, such as NGS or specialized panels, are sent out to a reference lab such as Labcorp or Quest.
What geographic areas will the new lab serve?
Initially, it will serve the Las Vegas Valley. I’ve had calls from Arizona and California labs asking us to do testing for them, so once we’re set up and ready, we’ll expand our range. Some of it has to do with licensing. Not every state requires a license, but California does.
How many clients are you currently serving, and do you expect that to increase with the new lab?
Outside of the UMC hospitals, we have about 14 reference clients that send us testing on an almost daily basis. It accounts for about $1 million of testing per year. I anticipate getting more clients once the new lab is open. We anticipate increasing the testing for our UMC patients as well, as they represent the biggest client population for the lab.
Do you expect your volume to increase substantially?
Right now, our lab runs about 7.5 million tests per year—mostly inpatient testing. Between molecular and microbiology, we run just under 2 million tests per year. We’re hoping to initially add at least another 500,000 in that first year. I anticipate adding volume each year for the first three or four years.
How will the new lab improve turnaround times?
Right now, specialized testing is sent to a reference lab. Most of them are out of state, such as California, Arizona and the East Coast. This causes delays just for transit times. And because of batch testing, some of the labs may only perform a test two or three days per week. So right now, any testing that’s sent out of state is averaging five to 10 days turnaround time. If we do the testing here, we can give the physicians 24-hour maximum turnaround time with most test results reported in four to six hours.
What else will the new lab offer?
We’ll have a BSL-3 lab. We are already the designated hospital if there’s an Ebola case here in town. We’ll also be able to do tuberculosis confirmation and some other tests, such as Zika. The big part of this will be the HLA lab. Once that opens, we’ll be supporting our own transplant program. We’ll also be able to support platelet matching for patients who need blood transfusions and surgeries.
How will this lab affect workforce development in Southern Nevada?
We plan on adding several full-time employees when the lab first opens, and as we grow, we’ll likely add more. I think the biggest contribution to the workforce will be the training we’ll be able to provide for future lab professionals. They’ll be able to have hands-on experience in a state-of-the-art lab.

How many med tech students are you training right now?
We generally have four rotating through our labs at any given time. We train them for eight weeks. With the added space and staff in the new lab, we’ll be able to train 2-4 more per year.

The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act would significantly impact independent labs by bringing them under the same strict federal price transparency mandates that currently apply only to hospitals. Versions of the bill were introduced late last year in the Senate (S. 2355) and House (H.R. 5582). The bill would require independent labs to make monthly public disclosures of their negotiated reimbursement rates across their entire test menu. “The reporting requirements in the current draft are staggering,” stated the American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) in a July 2 letter to Senate leaders.

New Bill Would Expand Price Transparency (cont’d from page 1) The champions behind the bipartisan Patients Deserve Price Tags Act are U.S. Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO). So far, the proposed legislation has the support of a total of 24 Senators and 12 members of the House.

“Customers don’t walk into a restaurant only to find out how much the food costs when they get the bill. Patients should know the price of the service they need before they make any decisions,” according to Senator Marshall.

“We deserve to know exactly what we are paying for whether it’s a lab test, a colonoscopy, or an
MRI,” stated Senator Hickenlooper.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) held a full committee hearing on the bill on March 19, 2026. In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held a hearing on June 10, 2026.

Effective July 1, 2027, the bill would require the following disclosures from all CLIA-certified clinical and anatomic pathology labs:

• Public Rate Sheets: Labs must make publicly available, and update monthly, all negotiated rates with health insurance plans for all lab tests and ancillary services they offer.
• Cash Discounts: Labs must explicitly disclose their standard discounted cash prices for patients paying out-of-pocket.
• Standardized Descriptions: Lab tests must be listed with plain-language descriptions and standard billing codes so consumers can easily compare prices across different facilities.

Furthermore, labs that fail to post their rates or try to hide fees will face heavy financial penalties and enforcement actions under the proposed legislation. Labs that fail to comply are subject to a civil monetary penalty (CMP) of up to $300 per day. And the bill gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (currently Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) the authority to increase the penalty starting in 2028.

In the letter to Senate leaders, ACLA President Susan Van Meter noted that there are more than 2,100 test codes on the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule alone and that some ACLA member labs have contracts with up to 900 health plans. Thus, the bill would require some large labs to review and post nearly two million rates each month (i.e., 2,100 codes x 900 plans). The reporting costs to meet this obligation would be significant and divert resources away from patient care, according to Van Meter.

“A far more reasonable approach—and one that would yield information that is truly useful to patients—would be to require clinical labs to post cash prices for those testing services on the CMS list of shoppable services,” according to Van Meter. There are currently 14 routine clinical lab tests specified in the CMS core list of 70 mandatory shoppable services.

Hospital Price Transparency

The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act also seeks to expand existing transparency requirements for hospitals. For example, the bill requires hospitals to update and post publicly their rates each month, rather than the current requirement of once a year. In addition, the bill dramatically increases penalties and mandates CMPs for every violation, removing CMS discretion. Under the

bill, for example, hospitals with more than 500 beds, would be subject to a $25 per bed per day fine (i.e., $12,500+ per day) for noncompliance.