January 2008
The nation’s fourth largest managed care company—Humana Inc. (Louisville, KY)—has signed multiyear contracts with both Quest Diagnostics (Madison, NJ) and LabCorp (Burlington, NC), as well as Sonic Healthcare USA (Austin, TX). These contracts, which are effective as of Jan. 1, 2008, extend current agreements to provide laboratory and testing services for the approximately 11.3 million Humana members.
While the financial terms of these contracts were not disclosed, these contracts follow a similar move by insurance provider CIGNA, who also signed multi-year agreements with Quest and LabCorp this past summer. In contrast, UnitedHealthCare (Minnetonka, MN) tapped LabCorp as its exclusive national provider in fall 2006, while Aetna has a preferred provider agreement with Quest. CIGNA has approximately 9 million members, compared to United HealthCare’s 28 million and Aetna’s 16 million members.
The extension of this U.S.-based contract is a boon for Sonic Healthcare, the Sydney, Australia-based lab company, which has been acquiring American labs at a rapid rate in recent years, beginning with the 2005 acquisition of Clinical Pathology Laboratories in Austin, Texas. In 2007, the company purchased Mullins Pathology & Cytology Laboratory in Augusta, Georgia.
Sonic Healthcare USA President David L. Schultz declined to provide any contract details, except to say that "Humana is a company that we wanted to continue to do business with, and we are glad they included us in their plans."
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