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
Two New Lab Companies Will Open in L.A. & Denver
CEO SUMMARY: It is unprecedented for two multi-billion-dollar health systems to announce laboratory testing outreach joint ventures just days apart. In Los Angeles, Providence Health & Services will partner with PAML to start a commercial lab company in the San Fernando Valle…
More Hospitals Consider PAML’s Lab JV Model
CEO SUMMARY: One joint venture at a time, PAML is convincing hospital and health system CEOs about the benefits of building a thriving laboratory outreach business. For their part, facing budget cutbacks and a decline in Medicare reimbursement, more hospital administrato…
Dr Lal PathLabs, Malpractice Costs, Med Tech Strike in New Zealand
BOSTON INVESTORS PURCHASE INTEREST IN DR LAL PATHLABS PATHOLOGY AND CLINICAL LABORATORY COMPANIES IN INDIA continue to attract investor interest. Last month, TA Associates, a private equity firm in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that it had purchased a minority interest in…
Epic Launches LIS Software To Fill Out Ancillary Offerings
MANY PATHOLOGISTS and laboratory administrators may be unaware that a company called Epic Systems Corporation is considered by some experts in healthcare informatics to be a disrupter of the status quo. Based in Verona, Wisconsin, Epic is best known for its acute an…
Payers Move to Pre-Authorize Expensive Genetic Tests
CEO Summary: Pre-authorization of expensive genetic and molecular tests is fast-becoming a priority for most of the nation’s health insurers. For clinical labs and pathology groups that don’t respond, this trend is a threat. On the other hand, because payers need all the skil…
California Pathologist Wins Medi-Cal Pay Case
CEO SUMMARY: It was a case that stretched back several years. Medi-Cal officials, wanting to pursue collection of what it deemed overpayments, claimed that the pathologist who was on the license of two defunct lab companies as medical director was personally liable for the $6.37 …
September 13, 2010 “Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”
Researchers at North Carolina State University are developing a method that might make it possible to diagnose and treat cancer through the use of special microneedles they developed. NCSU researchers use the microneedles to deliver nanoscale dyes based on quantum dots to locations u…
Lab Manager Training Program Coming to Four Cities This Fall
WHEN IT COMES TO PREPARING the next generation of laboratory managers to assume leadership roles, pathologists and lab administrators have few options. That is about to change. This fall, in four different cities, workshops will be conducted specifically to provide your laboratory’s most promising…
More Hospitals Now Use Point-of-Care Test Devices
CEO SUMMARY: Point-of-care testing (POCT) continues to gain acceptance in hospitals across the nation. One factor in this trend is improved technology for both the POC assays and the POC systems, each of which contributes to a more accurate and reproducible POC test result. But a…
HIEs Boost Fortunes of Community Hospital Labs
CEO SUMMARY: Regional health information exchanges (HIEs) are becoming more common. In Southern Indiana, the HealthLINC HIE is boosting the value that the community hospital laboratory provides to physicians. At the top of the list is expedited turnaround of laboratory test resul…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 10 – July 14, 2025
This issue is strong on different flavors of enforcement that clinical laboratories, whether they want to or not, will need to contend with. Lab stakeholders provide insights that medical labs need to brace for more action to counter pending test reimbursement rate cuts under PAMA. Also, this issue provides the legal and regulatory landscape for clinical labs’ use of AI and how it evolves with the technology. AI is creating legal uncertainty for clinical labs, especially around data privacy and FDA oversight of AI tools in diagnostics.
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