NEW YORK (360Dx) – UnitedHealthcare this week named seven labs to its new Preferred Laboratory Network. They are AmeriPath/DermPath, a division of Quest Diagnostics; BioReference and its GeneDx lab; Invitae; Laboratory Corporation of America; Mayo Clinic Laboratories; and Quest. PLN's goal is threefold: to make healthcare affordable, improve outcomes, and improve the patient experience, UHC said in a statement. PLN launches on July 1, 2019. While UHC customers can choose a lab not in PLN, the price of services accessed through the network will be lower, UHC said, noting that pathology services for a biopsy in PLN would be $90 compared to $150 outside of PLN.
Interpace Diagnostics announced this week that it has received the College of American Pathologists accreditation for its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New Haven, Connecticut laboratories. The firm noted that the Pittsburgh location serves as its largest laboratory and provides a wide variety of services including cytology, molecular testing, and pathology for several of its assays. The New Haven lab provides services for the firm's commercial molecular thyroid assays as well as all testing associated with clinical development and research activities.
Immunovia this week reported a 41 percent drop in sales for the first quarter. Sales for the three months ended March 31 fell to SEK 66,000 ($6,900) from SEK 112,000 ($11,738) in the year-ago period. The Swedish diagnostic development firm said that its net loss widened to SEK 26.4 million, or SEK 1.35 per share, from a net loss of SEK 17.3 million, or SEK 1 per share, a year ago.
Immunovia noted that it added two centers to its PanFAM-1 study: Umeå University Hospital in Sweden, and Catalan Institute of Oncology - Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain. It said that it is targeting sales of between SEK 250 million and SEK 300 million by 2022 based on self-payments for its IMMray PanCan-d test blood-based test for detecting pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. By 2024, the firm is targeting total sales of between SEK 800 million and SEK 1 billion from self-paying customers and reimbursements from payors.
The Medical Device Innovation Consortium announced this week that it will begin the public comment period for its Clinical Dx initiative. The group is hosting a one hour, free webinar on May 1 to discuss several topics, including an overview of its MDIC Public-Private Partnership; an overview of the Somatic Reference Samples Project; a review of criteria for prioritizing tumor suppressors, selecting variants, and selecting potential multi-gene signatures to be considered for reference samples; and a review of a prioritized list of tumor suppressors and process for public input. The group said that it also welcomes listeners' thoughts on gene signatures.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on 360Dx.