Safeway said Monday that it is partnering with Sonora Quest Laboratories after dumping Theranos this month.
Sonora, a joint venture of Banner Health and Quest Diagnostics, will open patient-service centers inside Arizona Safeway stores, starting with a north Scottsdale location already open.
Patients can schedule tests and receive results, all online and without a doctor's order. The tests include drug monitoring and cytogenetic testing.
"The endeavor between Sonora Quest Laboratories and Safeway is an investment in innovative capabilities in this new era of healthcare consumerism," Christina Noble, Sonora's vice president of business development, said in a news release announcing the partnership.
The move comes just a few weeks after it was revealed that Safeway was walking away from an exclusive partnership with Theranos, the troubled Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that had claimed to conduct tests with only a few drops of patients' blood. The Wall Street Journal reported in a damning series that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was critical of Theranos' lab protocols, among other complaints.
As part of the Theranos deal, Safeway spent about $350 million to build lab-testing clinics in more than 800 of its supermarkets nationwide. Safeway officials reportedly said Theranos had missed important deadlines in rolling out the tests.
In a news release, Sonora touts its safety, reliability and accreditation from the College of American Pathologists. Sonora claims to serve 23,000 patients every day in the state of Arizona, performing 57 million tests a year.
