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Even as the COVID-19 pandemic has taken center stage during the past two years, sexually transmitted diseases have also run rampant. To stem the rise in cases, they said a greater emphasis need to be placed on testing. Damian Alagia, senior medical director for advanced diagnostics and women's health at Quest Diagnostics, noted that there are many hurdles to getting a home test to commercialization, namely regulatory approval and payment models with insurers.

Lyme disease is an infectious disease spread by the bite of infected blacklegged ticks (also known as deer ticks) that carry the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, explains Harvey Kaufman, M.D., senior medical director of Medical Informatics at Quest Diagnostics. “It’s the most commonly occurring vector-borne disease in the United States,” he says.

Overall positivity rates in urine drug tests in the transportation/warehousing industry increased 4.4% in 2020 versus 5.5% in 2021 – a relative 25% increase year over year – according to data compiled by medical lab Quest Diagnostics. Almost 130,000 truck drivers have found themselves in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse as of June 1. Nearly 97,000 are still in prohibited status, and 72,000 of those haven’t even started the return to duty process.

Rite Aid is collaborating with Quest Diagnostics to provide access to COVID molecular testing to help its customers detect and prevent the spread of the virus. Quest is a provider of diagnostic information services and COVID testing. The company has performed more than 69 million COVID-19 molecular tests since March 2020.

Dr. Michael Racke is the Medical Director at Quest Advanced Neurology, which is extending the options for neurologic diagnoses by looking for biomarkers in blood tests. Michael explains, "And now, we're very much involved in developing plasma-based biomarkers to help diagnose Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease was a disorder that was initially diagnosed pathologically. You had to find the plaque and tangles in the brain at autopsy.

Quest Diagnostics said Wednesday that its proprietary monkeypox virus test is now available across the U.S., and within a month, it will be able to process samples using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s orthopoxvirus test.

Alzheimer’s Disease prevention and identification may become more achievable with emerging solutions, according to Michael Racke, MD, Medical Director of Neurology at Quest Diagnostics. On a recent Healthcare Strategies episode, Racke shared about a new test called AD Detect which uses a blood sample to identify the presence of Alzheimer’s Disease early in the disease’s progress.

The following is a guest article by Tom Romeo, General Manager of Healthcare IT at Quest Diagnostics. With a consistent approach, healthcare professionals can increase efficiency, timeliness and legibility, and better consistency and completeness of patient documentation. Ultimately, these benefits can also improve patient care and quality of service. Specifically, Intelligent Data Capture (IDC) is a tool that can help save time and money – and therefore improve care – by innovatively processing, classifying, extracting, validating and routing materials.

Quest Diagnostics said Thursday that it is participating in the CDC's Increasing Community Access to Testing (ICATT) for COVID-19 program. Through the program, Quest will provide $0 out-of-pocket COVID-19 testing to qualifying uninsured individuals at roughly 1,200 of the company's 2,100 patient service centers.

As healthcare workers continue to leave the industry at startling rates, health systems must find more effective ways to attract and retain employees. In a June Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by Quest Diagnostics, three healthcare executives discussed current workforce challenges, creative attraction and retention strategies and the results that have been achieved. And how intentional initiatives that focus on helping employees feel like they belong, have a career advancement path, and focus on wellness have also been proven to be effective.