Media Coverage

Secaucus-based Quest Diagnostics, a provider of diagnostic information services, announced that it has acquired PhenoPath, a national provider of specialized anatomic pathology (AP) and related services. Based in Seattle, PhenoPath provides AP, molecular oncology and other services that complement and extend those of the company’s Advanced Diagnostics portfolio of services. These include services, such as genetic sequencing and genomic tumor analysis, which require higher-order expertise and skill.

Gov. Phil Murphy was thrilled to join Quest Diagnostics CEO Steve Rusckowski at a ribbon-cutting for Quest’s new headquarters in Secaucus on Thursday morning. Murphy said he hoped that other CEOs would look at Quest, a Fortune 500 company, choosing New Jersey and follow suit. “We have a newfound will, in addition to our natural assets, to use our advantages to their fullest potential,” he said. “I hope that somewhere, the CEO of another forward-looking, innovative company is listening to us and saying, ‘You know what, if New Jersey works for Quest, then I’ve got to look there, too.’” Murphy spoke of the density of the talent pool in the northern region of the state, proximity to New York City, view of the city and transportation in the area. Murphy also hinted at his upcoming economic development trips abroad.

Quest Diagnostics announced today it has acquired specialized anatomic pathology service firm PhenoPath. The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, continued a buying spree for Quest this week, which included the acquisitions of Oxford Immunotec's US lab business and fertility and fertility diagnostics services firm ReproSource. PhenoPath is based in Seattle and provides anatomic pathology, molecular oncology, and other services such as genetic sequencing and genomic tumor analysis. It will operate as part of AmeriPath, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest.

Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, and Regional Medical Center Health System (RMC), a regional health care provider for a five-county service area in northeast Alabama, are teaming up to enhance the quality and value of diagnostic services to patients and their doctors through a new partnership agreement under which Quest will provide supply chain expertise, as well as perform laboratory reference testing.

Since Colorado legalized marijuana, the state has become a popular destination for so-called weed tourists. Johnny Welsh, a writer and bartender in Frisco, Colorado, a Rocky Mountain town near Vail, remembers when he would have the entire fall off work. "The restaurants closed, and you could travel the world," he told MoneyWatch, somewhat wistfully. Nationwide, the rate of workers testing positive for drugs has increased over the past decade, according to Quest Diagnostics, a major drug-testing laboratory. It has also risen in states that have made the drug legal. But the rate of increase has been about the same across the two categories, said Barry Sample, Quest's senior director for science and technology.

Quest Diagnostics today announced it has acquired fertility diagnostics service firm ReproSource for an undisclosed amount. Based Woburn, Massachusetts, ReproSource provides services such as ovarian health and recurrent pregnancy loss assessments, as well as implantation failure and semen quality. According to the company's website, it purchased the assets of "the largest fertility-focused laboratory in the United States" in 2008, and since then it improved and expanded its core services while establishing partnerships with laboratory, academic, and industry players in the US and globally.

If voters decide in November to legalize marijuana for recreational use, pot-smoking job seekers and employees beware. Legalization will not protect job applicants or employees who test positive for marijuana use on pre-employment drug tests or random workplace drug testing. Yes, you can still get fired or not be hired for a positive test. Unlike alcohol, where Breathalyzer tests can show the exact level in a person’s blood, there are few available tests that show the level of impairment for marijuana. Saliva swabs and urine samples only show if THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, has been used over the last few days, said Dr. Barry Sample, of Quest Diagnostics, a New Jersey company that analyzes millions of workplace drug tests every year, not a person’s level of impairment at the time of a test. Tests of hair samples will show THC levels going back as long as 90 days.

There has been a trend a recent years for hospitals and health systems to sell their lab outreach businesses, often to one of the two largest commercial reference labs, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and then outsource their lab services to the same company. There is some early evidence that this trend may now be reversing.

There’s no argument that health care is changing: from service-based to value-based care, and from a supplier-centric to a patient-centric model. Both regulatory and patient pressures are pushing for better efficiency, better outcomes and simply better care. These pressures are moving the industry to be more open to the adoption of new technologies, tools and, in many cases, solutions that automate manual processes. These tools are powered by a specialized rocket fuel known as patient data. But in the rush to digitally capture and make the best use of patient data, two primary challenges have arisen. First, how do we break down the information silos that currently exist within our health care system? Secondly, while breaking the silos, how do we protect sensitive patient information as we share it across the health care ecosystem? There is also a large number of other tech-centric businesses and organizations that are currently utilizing blockchain to generate innovative solutions. Even large health care giants such as Humana and Quest Diagnostics have begun their own ventures into the world of blockchain.

As someone who has studied use and misuse of prescription opioids and other drugs for much of my career, I know drug misuse can happen to anyone. I have had friends, relatives and neighbors pulled into misuse, which includes substance-use disorders and other dangerous behaviors, such as drug combining. And I am not alone. A recently released statewide poll found that 1 of 3 adults in Texas knows someone who has been addicted to prescription painkillers. McClure is the director of medical affairs for Quest Diagnostics , the world’s leading provider of diagnostics information services, including in clinical drug monitoring.

Cleveland Clinic's 16th annual Medical Innovation Summit, scheduled for Oct. 22-24 in downtown Cleveland, will center around the theme of "Disruption: Reimagining Healthcare."[CR-LF][CR-LF]The summit — organized by Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the system's development and commercialization arm — is anticipated to gather more than 100 speakers, as well as leaders from more than 500 organizations and 20 countries, according to a news release. It will be held at the Huntington Convention Center. According to the release, other featured speakers include Nigel Clarke, vice president of technology and solutions development for Quest Diagnostics.

Two conflicting trends are hitting the United States: a continuing shortage of qualified or willing candidates for truck driving jobs, and the increasing state-level legalization of medical or recreational marijuana. The two trends certainly don’t mix. David Couch, the Little Rock attorney who wrote the medical marijuana amendment voters approved in 2016, doesn’t want marijuana users driving big rigs any more than the most anti-pot politician does.A recent study by Quest Diagnostics, the national drug testing lab service, reported that overall drug use in the tested workforce is down in Arkansas. The national rate held steady at 4.2 percent of the workforce, while the state rate dropped from 6 percent in 2016 to 5 percent in 2017. The study measured individual drugs as well.

As we first reported last May, Holmes founded the start-up Theranos and boasted her technology could take a pin-prick worth of blood from the finger and perform hundreds of laboratory tests. It was, she claimed, "the most important thing humanity has ever built." At its zenith, Theranos was worth nearly $10 billion and Elizabeth Holmes became the youngest, self-made, female billionaire in the world. Today, she and her company's one-time president stand criminally charged by the U.S. government of perpetrating a "multi-million dollar scheme" to defraud investors, doctors and patients. Elizabeth Holmes built her company Theranos on this invention she named the Edison. A miniaturized blood analyzer that would disrupt the $60 billion lab testing industry dominated by giants LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics.

Although more than half of Americans misuse prescription drugs, the percentage that did so has held steady for four consecutive years, according to a new analysis. Meanwhile, though, there has also been a surge in the use of illicit drugs and medicines obtained without a prescription among patients being treated for substance use disorders.

The countless drops of sweat covering their drenched bodies are indicative of the hard work put in by the New York Giants throughout the hot and humid summer. Those same droplets were also analyzed and examined to help individual performance. The Giants used a new sweat test this year to make sure their players were properly hydrated and prepared for the rigors of summer. It should continue to help them throughout the season. It’s not a completely new idea, just a refined version of a sweat test. There are other teams using different variations of this new patch the Giants had analyzed by Quest Diagnostics as part of their Blueprint for Athletes program. This iteration is easier to implement and is believed to be more effective than the previous processes they have tried over the past few years. The hope is that its benefits can stretch throughout the year and provide even the slightest of competitive advantages.

Prescription data alone underestimated how many patients combined opioids and benzodiazepines, an analysis of Quest Diagnostics drug test data indicated. Among a selected sample of patients whose drug test indicated concurrent benzodiazepine and opioid use, 64% had at least one benzodiazepine or opioid that was not prescribed, according to Quest researcher Leland McClure, PhD, and colleagues in a poster presentation at the 2018 PAINWeek conference.

Genomic Vision, a company specializing in the development of diagnostic tests for the early detection of cancers and hereditary diseases, and applications for life sciences research, today announces the second payment from its collaboration with Quest Diagnostics on biomarker identification of currently undetected “2+0” SMA carriers following the Milestone program signed in 2018. A first Milestone (1a) was reached at the end of 2017, resulting in the design and validation of a new GMC covering with higher precision the complex SMA region. The goal of the second Milestone (1b) consisted in performing complementary experiments and analysis on existing samples in order to identify smaller biomarkers for SMN1 cis-duplication potentially leading to SMA diagnostic test.

Quest Diagnostics announced Tuesday it will acquire the US laboratory testing business of Oxford Immunotec Global for $170 million in cash. As part of the definitive agreement reached by the companies, the acquisition will include the T-Spot.TB tuberculosis testing service and the Accutix tick-borne disease testing service provided by Oxford Immunotec laboratories in Norwood, Massachusetts and in Memphis, Tennessee. Oxford Immunotec is headquartered in Abingdon, UK.

More than half of Americans tested by Quest Diagnostics in 2017 misused prescription drugs, a statistic that has remained relatively flat and suggests that medication adherence is more difficult as the opioid epidemic swells. The misuse rate — meaning tests reveal additional drugs (non-prescribed or illicit), different medications than prescribed, or no prescription or illicit drugs — was 52% in 2017 and 2016, and has remained relatively stagnant since 2013, according to Quest Diagnostics' analysis of 3.9 million clinical drug monitoring tests administered between 2011 and 2017.

Hooper Holmes, Inc. d/b/a Provant Health , the largest publicly traded, pure-play health and well-being provider in the U.S., today announced that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Summit Health, Inc., a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics (“Quest”), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing, information, and services. Under the asset purchase agreement, Quest will acquire substantially all of Provant Health’s assets and will continue the Company’s service offerings as it has in the past. Throughout the transaction process, Provant Health will continue to serve its customers, remaining focused on meeting customer and partner obligations in the busy fourth quarter season.

Blockchain technology is currently known for keeping cryptocurrency transactions secure. With adaptations, it may soon be used to keep personal health information more safe and secure, as its name suggests, than ever before. The current model for storing data is by keeping said data stored in one place. For example, a Microsoft Word document is saved to a desktop. While access to that document may be made through the server, even remotely, it is still saved in a single, centralized location. Blockchain is, arguably, the exact opposite.Over the summer, UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Optum, Quest Diagnostics and MultiPlan launched a pilot program using blockchain technology to assist payers in tackling mandated provider directories. The program utilizes the technology to reduce costs associated with insurers updating demographic data from providers.

It’s been years since the tobacco industry promised to stop luring young people to smoke cigarettes. Philip Morris International says it is “designing a smoke-free future.” British American Tobacco, likewise, claims to be “transforming tobacco” into a safer product. But while the Food and Drug Administration weighs plans to cut nicotine in cigarettes, making them less addictive, Big Tobacco has been making the most of the time it still has using social networks to promote its brands around the world.

Tom Romeo, general manager of healthcare IT and Quanum Solutions at Quest Diagnostics, said hospitals and health systems must identify the cause of insurance claim denials to ensure proper and timely payment. "Identify the source of denials through reports and discussions with staff, and then prioritize fixing the problem," he told Becker's Hospital Review. "Train staff about these issues and review top denials regularly in meetings with physicians. It's critical to recognize the contribution of every employee in the denial-management process."

As more women put off starting families and U.S. fertility rates drop, helping women assess how much time, and how many eggs, they have left to conceive is a growing business. The market for ovulation tests, fertility monitors and other mail-in home tests to help women up their odds of bearing fruit is exploding. Several startups are selling kits that allow women to test their fertility at home with a simple finger prick. Modern Fertility allows women to send a blood sample drawn by pricking a finger or having blood drawn at a lab and tested at Quest Diagnostics. The at-home test is mailed back and then screened.

A group of newborn infants with genetic disorders that went undetected in standard testing will receive genomic sequencing in a clinical study of its safety and feasibility. The study is led by a team at Tufts University Medical Center in Boston, and conducted at another 5 sites in the U.S., supported by a 5-year, $8 million grant from National Center for Advancing Translational Science, or NCATS, part of National Institutes of Health. The trial is recruiting 400 newborns with potential genetic disorders that were not detected in standard screenings. The infants will receive whole genomic sequencing, as well as targeted genomic tests for 1,722 inherited disorders known to affect newborns, developed with Quest Diagnostics, a nationwide network of medical labs.