Media Coverage

Historically low unemployment rates and increasing marijuana use has led some employers in states where recreational cannabis is legal to drop their zero-tolerance policies.[CR-LF][CR-LF]But not everyone is ready to make the leap.[CR-LF][CR-LF]As Illinois readies for recreational marijuana to become legal on Jan. 1, employers here are being told to consider how a zero-tolerance policy may affect their ability to recruit workers.[CR-LF][CR-LF]“Unemployment is so low that employers cannot insist on a zero-tolerance policy,” said Curtis Graves, staff attorney for the Denver-based Employers Council not-for-profit. The council has surveyed Colorado employers every other year since 2014 when recreational use of cannabis was legalized in the state.[CR-LF]Marijuana positivity increased by 75% from 2013 to 2016 in the general U.S. workforce, according to the Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index. Nearly 9% tested positive in 2016, according to Quest.

Q&A with David Freeman. Most people I talk to in pharma and biotech know that Quest Diagnostics is a leader in laboratory diagnostic services. What they often don’t know is the depth of the company's experience and capabilities in data, analytics and services across the development continuum. Beyond having over 48 billion clinical lab results in its database, Quest has 2,250 patient service centers, increasingly in retail locations, 20,000 mobile care professionals seeing patients in workplaces and the home. Quest provides services to half the country’s hospitals and physicians roughly a third of the adult U.S. population every year. The Clinical Insights portfolio started in 2015 with dialogue between Quest data scientists and medical directors with researchers in pharma who were trying to understand large patterns in disease progression, diagnosis and treatment. Those dialogues, which continue to this day, produce rich insights and customized at-scale data sets and analysis used for research and the planning of new therapeutic launches.

Op-ed: Is blockchain the technology that’s going to fix healthcare’s many problems? Potentially. But not now. Not even close. Before we can fix healthcare with blockchain, we need to break down the barriers that are preventing blockchain from fixing healthcare. The Synaptic Health Alliance pilot has been a cue about blockchain’s future in healthcare. Led by healthcare giants Aetna, Ascension, Humana, MultiPlan, Optum, UnitedHealthcare, and Quest Diagnostics, the program plans to use blockchain to reduce administrative costs and improve data quality. Early this year, other big-time players — Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), PNC Bank, and IBM — announced a new collaborative that will leverage blockchain technology to enhance interoperability and transparency in healthcare. Many smaller partnerships continue to follow suit. However, it doesn't pay to be a guinea pig.

Hc1's software employs machine learning to prevent health systems from ordering too many or too few tests, a mistake that can lead to missed diagnoses and costly procedures.

According to a new analysis by Quest Diagnostics, one-third of U.S. industry sectors experienced year-over-year double-digit increases in workforce drug positivity between 2015 and 2018, with marijuana as the most commonly detected drug. The Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index is an analysis of more than 14 million urine drug tests of the general U.S. workforce in 17 different sectors.

Quest Diagnostics, through its Cleveland HeartLab subsidiary, has entered into an agreement to purchase for $8.5 million certain assets of bankrupt testing firm True Health Diagnostics.

Michigan is preparing to usher in a new era with legal recreational marijuana sales in 2020, but the state's largest employers say their pre-employment drug screenings that include cannabis will not change. The state's residents already are failing pre-employment drug screening tests at a rate higher than elsewhere in the nation. According to Quest Diagnostics data, the numbers of people who didn't pass pre-employment drug screenings and likely lost potential job opportunities has increased by 31% from 2014 to 2018, and jumped more than 20% between 2017 and 2018, alone. A Quest Diagnostics scientist said the numbers suggest a spike in marijuana use.

Americans largely don't trust the healthcare system to secure their data, and one doesn't have to dig hard to find out why. In 2018, the healthcare sector retained the dubious honor of being the industry with the most data breaches, and less than a quarter of the country trusts health systems to protect their information, according to an August survey by the Harvard T.H. Chain School of Public Health. HHS first began requiring healthcare providers and their business associates to publicly disclose data breaches involving 500 people or more roughly a decade ago. Last year, nearly 300 breaches exposed the records of 11.5 million patients, and one single cybersecurity breach this year hitting the billing collection vendor for lab giants Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp affected the data of nearly 20 million patients.

Laboratory testing is one of the most commonly performed medical activities with, according to the American Clinical Laboratory Association, some 7 billion tests ordered each year.[CR-LF][CR-LF]A substantial number of those tests are likely unnecessary, however. A 2013 meta-analysis published in Plos One, for instance, found that roughly 21 percent of lab test orders represented over-utilization, meaning they didn't add information that was useful to patient careAt the same time, the study put the test underutilization rate at almost 45 percent, indicating that in a substantial proportion of cases, potentially useful tests are never used.[CR-LF][CR-LF]Also last week, Quest Diagnostics announced it had developed in collaboration with bioinformatics firm Hc1 a test utilization optimization system using Hc1's machine learning technology.[CR-LF][CR-LF]Called Quest Lab Stewardship, the product is part of Quest's broader move into providing lab management services for hospitals and health systems.[CR-LF][CR-LF]The system uses guidelines developed by the ABIM Foundation's Choosing Wisely initiative to assess the appropriateness of test orders combined with Hc1's data analysis and integration capabilities to help hospital systems make more effective use of that appropriateness data.

A truck driver who says he took CBD oil for injuries to his hip and back that he suffered in a vehicle accident is suing the company that produced the product, alleging mislabeling.[CR-LF][CR-LF]The lawsuit says that the label stated the product contained no THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the compound in marijuana that produces a high. But following a random drug screening, Douglas Horn, of New York, was told by his employer that he tested positive for THC, his lawsuit states.[CR-LF][CR-LF]Employees subject to random drug tests need to be especially careful, said Barry Sample, director of science and technology solutions for Quest Diagnostics, a global diagnostic test and information network.