Quest acquires Concentra lab business

Quest Diagnostics, a Madison, N.J.-based provider of diagnostic information services, has acquired medical center operator Concentra's toxicology and clinical laboratory business and agreed to serve as Concentra's primary provider of workplace drug toxicology and clinical laboratory testing.

“With this transaction, Concentra's patients, physicians and employer clients will gain access to Quest's industry-leading menu of innovative workplace drug and clinical lab diagnostic information services,” Quest President and CEO Steve Rusckowski said in a news release.

Though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, the parties expect to transition Concentra's Memphis, Tenn.-based laboratory business to Quest by year-end. This is the third acquisition of a lab business by Quest in 2013. In January, Quest acquired UMass Memorial Medical Center's clinical and anatomic-pathology laboratory business, and in April, Quest announced a deal to acquire by June the lab-related clinical service operations of California and Nevada hospital system Dignity Health.

In a recent phone interview with Modern Healthcare, Rusckowski said

similar deals could be expected on the part of Quest.

“CEOs are thinking strategically about what's the best future plan for them, where to allocate capital and put scarce resources, what their core competency is. Hospital CEOs are thinking it's best for them to no longer be in the laboratory business,” Rusckowski said. “Because of economics and because we do this exclusively, we're very effective and very efficient at this provision of healthcare.”

According to Quest's 2012 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company processed about 147 million test requisitions last year. It is the world's largest diagnostic testing information services provider by revenue, with nearly $7.4 billion net revenue in 2012.

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