Media Coverage

Quest Diagnostics: Q4 Non-GAAP EPS of $1.36 misses by $0.01; GAAP EPS of $0.92 misses by $0.27.

Quest Diagnostics, the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, and Houston Healthcare 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 full laboratory management services for Houston Medical Center and Perry Hospital.

Secaucus-based Quest Diagnostics announced Monday it has completed its previously announced acquisition of the clinical laboratory services business of Boyce & Bynum Pathology Laboratories. BBPL, based in Columbia, Missouri, is a provider of diagnostic and clinical laboratory services in the Midwest. Through a separate agreement, BBPL has been named the exclusive pathology provider for Quest Diagnostic clients in Missouri.

IBM Watson Health today announced an expansion to its partnership with the Broad Institute, providing artificial intelligence to help clinicians mine genomic data to predict patient risk for cardiovascular disease. IBM Watson and the Broad already are a little more than two years into a five-year, $50 million research initiative that seeks to discover the basis for drug resistance in cancers. The Broad is a partner in IBM Watson Genomics from Quest Diagnostics, a service that is available to oncologists nationwide that focuses on oncology diagnostics and providing options for evidence-based methods of treating cancer.

The stigma around marijuana use, both medical and recreational, is slowly dwindling as states throughout the country work towards marijuana legalization. 33 states have officially declared medical marijuana use legal and 10 states have legalized recreational use of the drug. However, a question lingers nationwide regarding views of marijuana in the workplace. All companies hold the right to drug test their employees; however, some industries feel that it’s necessary to test for marijuana regularly while others don’t. On the flip side, there is a large number of companies that don’t drug test as heavily — and that number is growing. With drug tests costing companies around $30 to $50 per employee, many see it as a wasted expense. Quest Diagnostics said that failed drug tests reached an all-time high in 2017 and this is likely to increase as legalization becomes more widespread. Drug testing restricts the job pool, meaning companies aren’t able to find the best candidates for open positions.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 01/31/2019 settlement date, and we here at Dividend Channel like to sift through this fresh data and order the underlying components of the S&P 500 by "days to cover." There are a number of ways to look at short data, for example the total number of shares short; but one metric that we find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded.

Quest Diagnostics, the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, announced that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of the clinical laboratory services business of Boyce & Bynum Pathology Laboratories (BBPL), a leading provider of diagnostic and clinical laboratory services in the Midwest.

A diagnostic test used by Mayo Clinic to detect a rare neurological disease involves standard techniques and is not subject to patent law, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The appellate court's decision to uphold a district court ruling in the patent dispute effectively denied claims by Quest Diagnostics' Athena Diagnostics division that it was owed royalties for the testing. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with Mayo in a 2-1 decision.

Back in 2017, Microsoft first announced the new AI-powered research project under Healthcare NExT initiative that enables healthcare providers to easily create intelligent and compliant healthcare virtual assistants and chatbots. Last year, Microsoft announced the preview of Healthcare Bot service on Azure Marketplace that enabled healthcare organizations to build and deploy, AI-powered virtual health assistants and chatbots. Microsoft today announced the general availability of the service. Virtual health assistants built using this service can be used for enhancing processes, self-service support, and cost reduction efforts. Quest Diagnostics in Cary, NC recently built a bot using the Microsoft Healthcare Bot service. This bot helps Quest Diagnostics' patients in finding testing locations, schedule appointments and get answers to non-medical questions such as whether to fast before a blood test or when to expect results.

Several large health insurance companies, including Aetna, Anthem, and Healthcare Service Corporation, have announced a collaboration with PNC Bank and IBM to utilize blockchain technology to “improve transparency and interoperability in the health care industry” and “address a range of industry challenges, including promoting efficient claims and payment processing, to enable secure and frictionless healthcare information exchanges, and to maintain current and accurate provider directories.” The Synaptic Health Alliance launched in April 2018 with Humana, MultiPlan, Quest Diagnostics, UnitedHealthcare and Optum.