Laboratory Industry Report
Get an insider's view of the lab industry's most important business and financial trends, plus predictions for 2008 and beyond. In each issue, you find: Comparative data on lab pricing How to deal with healthcare integration, capitation, technology advances, etc. Clear perspectives of how your firm is performing vs. the market at large How publicly-traded lab companies are performing and what their top executives earn Updates on late-breaking mergers & acquisitions.
March 2010 - Table of Contents
The recent merger of Roanoke, Va.-based Carilion Labs and Greensboro, N.C.-based Spectrum Laboratory Network is set to disrupt the current competitive environment in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern regions, as well as intensify the already compressed pricing environment, say industry insiders.
As the freeze on the update to Medicare physician payments is set to end on March 1, it’s unclear at press time how Congress will address the issue when it reconvenes the week of Feb. 22 after a week-long recess. Medicare reimbursement to doctors is scheduled to be reduced 21 percent under the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula on March 1.
The nation’s second largest testing provider ended 2009 in strong fashion, with fourth-quarter revenues up 3.4 percent to $1.16 billion, and full-year revenues climbing 4 percent to $4.69 billion. This is solid growth for LabCorp (Burlington, N.C.), particularly compared to fourth-quarter and full-year results from the industry leader, Quest Diagnostics (Madison, N.J.)—which reported fourth-quarter revenue growth of 2.7 percent to $1.8 billion and full-year revenue growth of 2.8 percent to $7.5 billion. …
Health care providers, including laboratories and pathologists, face restrictions on their sales and marketing practices that many other professionals do not have to contend with. Violation of key laws can result in substantial financial penalties, warns Hope Foster, an attorney with Mintz Levin (Washington, D.C.).
Citing economic pressures, anatomic pathology (AP) testing provider Bostwick Laboratories (Richmond, Va.) has shut down its Washington, D.C., metro-based American International Pathology Laboratories (AIPL) only six months after its launch, according to a company memo from CEO and chief medical officer David Bostwick, M.D., recently obtained by LIR.
While not all the publicly traded labs’ full-year 2009 results are in and 10-Ks have been filed, some early analysis of productivity data reveals that Salt Lake City specialty testing provider Myriad Genetics is showing big gains in two benchmarking measures: revenue per full-time employee (FTE) and pretax income per employee (see Table).
Both sides in the landmark lawsuit challenging the patenting of human genes have asked a federal court to rule in their favor without a trial during oral arguments at a Feb. 2 hearing in New York City, reports Washington G-2 Reports’ National Intelligence Report. This marks the first time that a challenge to gene patenting has been heard in federal court.
Dallas-based Baylor Health Care will team up with Houston-based cancer care and research company US Oncology to launch a molecular diagnostic laboratory.
The 13 publicly traded labs tracked by G-2 Reports’ Laboratory Stock Index continue to struggle in early 2010.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is considering three options for addressing problems resulting from in the in-office ancillary services exception to the Stark law, including excluding certain services from the exception (such as diagnostic tests that are not usually provided at the same time as the office visit).
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