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
October 17, 2011 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”
Have you ever heard the term “digital PCR” (Polymerase Chain Reaction)? That technology was of such interest to Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., that it just paid $162 million to acquire QuantaLife, Inc., the company that developed this digital PCR technology. The dea…
LabCorp Inks Agreement In Medi-Cal Pricing Case
CEO SUMMARY: In its “Settlement Agreement and Release” with the California Attorney General (AG), Laboratory Corporation of America has negotiated terms that essentially match the agreement that exists between Quest Diagnostics Incorporated and the California AG. These settle…
National Group Names Riedel “Whistleblower of the Year”
WHISTLEBLOWING HAS ITS REWARDS. During 2011, one laboratory whistleblower not only harvested tens of millions of dollars in settlement awards, but he was recently honored by a national group for these same efforts. Chris Riedel, President of Hunter Laboratories, Inc., in Campbell, C…
POC Testing Plays Role In Penna. Patient’s Death
CEO SUMMARY: In the report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on the death of a patient at Lehigh Valley Hospital, it was noted that the clinical staff failed to notice discrepancies between results from point-of-care (POC) tests at the bedside and lab test results from blo…
Using Accurate Data to Grow Lab Outreach
CEO SUMMARY: In recent years, the laboratory outreach program at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, has achieved impressive rates of growth in specimen volume and net revenue. One reason for this success is that the lab outreach program moni…
Thermo Fisher, Intrinsic Bioprobes, Kaiser Permanente, UCSF, CLMA, ASCLS
THERMO FISHER BUYS INTRINSIC BIOPROBES, CONTINUES BUYING SPREE IT’S ANOTHER ACQUISITION FOR Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts. It purchased Intrinsic Bioprobes, Inc., of Rochester, New York, earlier this month. A m…
ELINCS Specifications Released in California
CEO SUMMARY: Clinical laboratories and pathology groups have a new tool to use for interfacing their LIS (laboratory information systems) with the electronic health record (EHR) systems of their office-based physician clients. It is ELINCS, an IT standard designed to support elec…
TriCore Earns Multi-Site CAP 15189 Accreditation
CEO SUMMARY: To achieve the goals of continuous improvement and standardization across all facilities within its organization, TriCore Reference Laboratories opted to implement the CAP 15189 quality management system (QMS). Last month, the lab announced its accreditation to CAP 1…
September 26, 2011 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”
Here’s a laboratory with what may be one of the world’s biggest accounts receivable problems. In South Africa, the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) says it is owed $1.8 billion Rand (about US $214 million) from its client accounts. As reported by a regional television s…
Georgia HIE Helps all Labs Feed Test Data to Docs
CEO SUMMARY: In Macon, Georgia, an innovative effort by a regional extension center and a health information exchange (HIE) will level the playing field for hospital labs and independent labs in the state. Their goal is to build a secure and flexible clinical integration platform…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 14 – October 6, 2025
The Dark Report examines increasing healthcare costs for employers and how clinical labs can help those employers. Also, an in-depth case study shows how one hospital system regained its outreach program after originally ceding it to a national lab company, adding millions to the system’s bottom line.
See the full table of contentsHow Much Laboratory Business Intelligence Have You Missed?
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