Robert Michel
Until Robert L. Michel came along and founded The Dark Intelligence Group (DIG) two decades ago, the clinical laboratory industry and the anatomic pathology profession lacked a trustworthy source for information about the management and operations of medical laboratories. From its inception in 1995, The Dark Report quickly became the “go to” source of industry intelligence, innovations in lab management, and strategic market analysis.
This excellence in reporting has earned recognition from his peers. For example, twice Michel and The Dark Report have won national awards for best investigative reporting by the Specialty Information Publishers Association. In 2005, the award was for Michel’s coverage about how the anatomic pathology condominium laboratories (pod labs) operated by urologists and gastroenterologists came to be, who operated them, and how these owners marketed the AP condo labs to other physician groups. In 2009, Michel’s award for best investigative reporting resulted from his published interviews with Quest Diagnostics Incorporated when the company admitted that, for a period of 18 months, it had been reported inaccurate Vitamin 25(OH) D results because of problems with its laboratory-developed test methodology. The Dark Report’s story was picked up by The New York Times and was in the national news cycle for several days.
In his role as Editor-in-Chief, Michel brought unique capabilities to DIG and The Dark Report. His management training and diverse business experience—along with his skills as a concise writer and analyst—proved to be a winning combination for readers of The Dark Report. For that reason, Michel’s story has many intriguing elements.
Immediately prior to founding DIG, he had served in several executive positions for Nichols Institute based in Portland, Oregon, and San Juan Capistrano, California. This was during the time that Nichols Institute was an independent public lab company with annual revenues of about $280 million (prior to its acquisition by MetPath, Inc., now Quest Diagnostics Incorporated). He traveled extensively to many of the clinical lab business units owned by Nichols Institute in different regions of the United States and played a role in formulating effective market strategies in response to the emergence of closed-panel HMOs, capitated pricing, and full-risk managed care contracts, among other successful management initiatives.
Prior to his service at Nichols Institute, Michel served at three different Fortune 100 companies. These were Procter & Gamble, Centex Corporation, and Financial Corp. of America. Each was an opportunity to master new management techniques and apply them in different industries. Between these positions, he gained experience as an entrepreneur, having founded a real estate development firm and a general contracting company in the Southeastern United States.
Robert Michel earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he played rugby, a sport he participated in for another 22 years. He is a native of California and grew up in Santa Ana.
Articles by Robert Michel
What’s Ahead for Labs? It’ll Be Quite Different
CEO SUMMARY: In many ways, the nation’s clinical laboratories performed magnificently in response to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak last winter. But that magnificent performance has taken its toll on the infrastructure and personnel within these labs. The Dark Report…
Academic, Commercial Collaboration for Testing
CEO SUMMARY: In several important ways, this collaboration involving an academic clinical laboratory and a commercial company has paid big dividends, not just for the two partners, but also the parent university that oversaw the project. The two partners developed a SARS-CoV-2 test, t…
Critics Say New At-Home Test Is Expensive and Late to Market
ONCE AGAIN, THE COMBINATION of the pandemic and the federal government may be creating a credible new competitor in the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry. This time, the lucky company is Ellume, which was just awarded $231.8 million from the Biden administration to s…
Variant Sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 Creates Opportunities for Labs
CEO SUMMARY: Variants of the COVID-19 virus are appearing across the world. Recent data show the same variants will infect people in several different countries. Here in the United States, interest is growing in having clinical laboratories sequence specimens from patients who test pos…
Proscia Lands Major Deals as Digital Pathology Demand Grows
EVEN AS THE WORLDWIDE COVID-19 PANDEMIC DERAILED SOME INDUSTRIES, it gave a major boost to digital pathology. That has meant an expanding market for Proscia, a seven-year-old provider of digital and computational pathology solutions. Established in 2014, Proscia recently won …
hc1, Visiun, and Viewics: Analytics Market Evolves
CEO SUMMARY: To understand any development in the marketplace, it is best to follow the money. That Roche, Quest Diagnostics, and LabCorp spent money either to purchase or partner with a lab analytics company in the past 36 months indicates that these enterprises believe acquiring or …
February 8, 2021 Intelligence: Late-Breaking Lab News
Pathologists and clinical lab managers with an entrepreneurial yen will be interested to know that Anthem, Inc., which serves 43 million beneficiaries, has launched a digital incubator. The new initiative was announced last month. Fierce Healthcare reported that the…
CAP Loses CLIA Accreditation Clients to Joint Commission
This is an excerpt of a 1,790-word article in the January 19, 2021 issue of THE DARK REPORT (TDR). The full article is available to members of The Dark Intelligence Group. CEO SUMMARY: Over the past 18 months, several prominent national health systems decided to shift their CLIA …
CAP Loses Accreditation Clients to Joint Commission
CEO SUMMARY: Over the past 18 months, several prominent national health systems decided to shift their CLIA laboratory accreditation services away from the College of American Pathologists and to The Joint Commission. These shifts from one accrediting body to another will involve hu…
Why Are Health Systems Changing CLIA Accreditors?
CEO SUMMARY: It is uncommon for a major health system to switch its CLIA lab accreditation business from one accrediting body to another. Yet, just in the past 18 months, that decision was made by the Veterans Administration, Ascension Health, and Providence Health. This is an impor…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXVIII, Number 2 – February 8, 2021
VARIANT SEQUENCING FOR COVID-19 is the next big opportunity for clinical labs and pathology groups. It is currently being undertaken by large labs and academic medical centers, but local labs could be next. Also, The Dark Report reports on a highly successful collaboration on a COVID test between a university and a commercial company.
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