There is a billion-dollar laboratory acquisition underway in Ontario, Canada. LifeLabs Medical Services is moving ahead with its planned purchase of CML HealthCare for US$917 million. The deal was made public on June 25 and, because it represents a major consolidation of the province’s two largest clinical laboratory organizations, there have been some critics. However, both companies expect regulatory approval of the merger.
MORE ON: LifeLabs
LifeLabs is the current name for the former laboratory services business of MDS, Inc. It was 2006 when this lab business was acquired by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) for a price of US$1.18 billion. Earlier this year, LifeLabs purchased BC Biomedical Laboratories of Surrey, British Columbia. This purchase represented further lab consolidation in that province, since LifeLabs operates a sizeable regional laboratory facility in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver.
LOINC & SNOWMED TO BE LINKED
Here is another sign of the ongoing integration of healthcare informatics. Last month, the Regenstrief Institute and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) announced a 10- year agreement that calls for the two organizations to more tightly link their respective technologies. The Regenstrief Institute manages the Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) and IHTSDO manages SNOWMED. The two organizations intend to more tightly link the clinical semantics of the two code sets.
TRANSITIONS
- Boyce and Bynum Pathology Laboratories of Columbia, Missouri , announced the retirement of General Manager Michael Gray. Gray will finish duties by year end. Gray has served as General Manager since 1968.
- Richard Cotten will be the new Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Boyce and Bynum. He has held executive positions at Laboratory Corporation o f America, Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, and SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories.
Dark Daily Update
Have you caught the latest e-briefings from DARK Daily? If so, then you’d know about…
…the acquisition of Hunter Laboratories, Inc., of Campbell, California, by BioReference Laboratories, Inc., (BRLI) of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, last week. The acquisition gives BRLI its first lab facility on the West Coast of the United States.
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