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January 2, 2013

Quest Wraps Up UMass Labs Acquisition

COURTESY Quest Diagnostics will house the laboratory outreach businesses it acquired from UMass Memorial Medical Center at this Forest Street property in Marlborough.

Quest Diagnostics has completed its previously-announced purchase of UMass Memorial Medical Center's clinical outreach laboratory business, the New Jersey-based company announced.

Quest announced today that it has also acquired UMass' anatomic pathology outreach laboratory division. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Quest has finalized a 200,000-square-foot lease deal in Marlborough – at a former Hewlett-Packard facility – where it will build a laboratory over the next 18 to 24 months. When the lab is built, Quest will move the UMass lab operations there, as well as employees from its Athena Diagnostics business in Worcester and from its facility in Cambridge, it said.

UMass will have the option to invest in a minority financial stake in the business once the lab is built. And its staff and faculty will provide physician pathology and other clinical services to Quest.

"We look forward to bringing together the academic expertise of UMass Memorial with the advanced testing, scale and operational excellence of Quest Diagnostics' independent lab business," said Steve Rusckowski, president and CEO of Quest. "Over time, this powerful combination will deliver a broader range of clinically important services for physicians and patients, but at costs lower than many hospital outreach labs can match."

Difficulty competing on price with private lab services companies was one big reason UMass decided to sell the lab outreach business, its CEO John O'Brien has said.

In today's announcement, O'Brien said the sale is one way to address the high cost of health care.

"This transaction with Quest Diagnostics will allow us to focus on our core hospital services, while ensuring that our physicians and patients receive exceptional diagnostic services from the industry leader," O'Brien said.

The deal adds about 50 new patient service centers to Quest's existing 75 centers in Massachusetts.

Quest's Marlborough facility will eventually employ up to 1,200 people, it said. Local and state officials there recently approved a tax increment financing deal that includes state tax credits in exchange for moving jobs to Marlborough and investing in renovations to the vacant HP campus.

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