Media Coverage

As night approaches at Allegheny County Airport, after most of the air traffic has come and gone, the flight crews of Quest Diagnostics are just getting started.[CR-LF][CR-LF]More than 3,700 Quest ground couriers deliver a wide range of medical samples, including vials of blood and bone marrow, from doctors’ offices and Quest outpatient centers to the airport. Crews load the samples on cargo jets for overnight flights to Quest laboratories to be tested.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has recently issued draft guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. This was written together with the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). [CR-LF][CR-LF]The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has recently issued draft guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. This was written together with the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). They offer a public comment period until August 10, 2019.

A company offering to freeze donors’ T cells and save them until the day they are needed—perhaps even years before the onset of cancer or disease—is getting off the ground with $1 million in funding and partnerships with some of the largest operators in blood sample management and cold chain logistics.[CR-LF][CR-LF]As a kind of T-cell insurance, Cell Vault is pitching a simple concept: Today’s cutting-edge chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies require a starting point of donated T cells, which are genetically modified to better recognize, target and destroy tumor cells before being readministered to the patient. Elsewhere, mobile blood draw and sample collections will be completed by ExamOne, a Quest Diagnostics company. Cell Vault is also gathering medical advice from CAR-T specialists at the Medical College of Wisconsin

An employee has a beer or two with colleagues at a local bar after the work shift is over. Another heads home for a glass of wine with dinner. The next day, there is no alcohol impairment in the worker, and that’s why an employer would not have a problem with either of these scenarios. But even in states where cannabis has been legalized, drug testing continues to search for signs of marijuana use that in no way necessarily reflects worker impairment.The number of positives for drugs in the workforce has reached a 14-year high of 4.4%, according to an annual analysis conducted by Quest Diagnostics, one of the nation’s largest clinical laboratory testing companies. The rates of drug use are now more than 25% higher than the 30-year low of 3.5 percent recorded between 2010 and 2012.

Make sure the lab is in-network[CR-LF]If your insurance only covers lab work done at, say, Quest Diagnostics, but your doctor usually sends their samples to a different lab, you can end up footing the bill. Before getting your test done, double-check which labs will be covered by your insurance and be sure to notify your doctor; it’s just one question you should be asking your doctor but probably aren’t.