Cerner Corporation is celebrating a big summer of contract awards from the Department of Defense. First up was a project to support further standardization of anatomic pathology within the laboratories operated worldwide by the DoD. Early in July, it was announced that the DoD had awarded a global software contract to Cerner. The company will provide its CoPathPlus pathology LIS and associated hardware to DoD pathology laboratories throughout the United States and abroad. In language from the 2014 DoD contract announcement, it was noted that Cerner “was the only contractor” that can provide proprietary services and equipment for the CoPath Plus system.
More On: Cerner
Of greater significance is the announcement last week by DoD officials that it would award a huge contract to provide electronic health records to DoD medical facilities to the joint venture made up of Cerner, Leidos and Accenture Federal. The first two-year phase of the contract is worth $4.3 billion. There are additional multi-year option periods and DoD officials stated that the collective value of the contract and these options will be at least $9 billion.
Quest Acquires MemorialCare’s Lab Outreach Business
By the end of August, one of California’s longest-running hospital laboratory outreach programs will be acquired by Quest Diagnostics Incorporated. On June 30, MemorialCare Health System of Fountain Valley, California, and Quest Diagnostics announced an agreement that calls for Quest to purchase MemorialCare’s lab outreach business. MemorialCare is a six-hospital health system. One of its anchor hospitals, 420-bed Long Beach Memorial, has operated a competitive laboratory outreach program for several decades.
TRANSITIONS
Pathologist Bruce Quinn, M.D., Ph.D., was appointed as Senior Director at FaegreBD Consulting, a consulting campany that is part of Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, a law firm with 12 offices nationally. He has previously worked at Foley Hoag LLP, Accenture, Northwestern University School of Medicine, the New York University School of Medicine, and the UCLA Center for Health Sciences.
Dark Daily Update
Have you caught the latest e-briefings from DARK Daily? If so, then you’d know about…
…noted healthcare strategist Paul Keckly of Navigant Healthcare is predicting that the skyrocketing costs of cancer care will soon exceed the value of new diagnostic lab tests and therapeutic drugs for cancer.
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That’s all the insider intelligence for this report. Look for the next briefing on Monday, August 24, 2015.
