Testing Increasingly Decisive in Physician Diagnosis

About 80% of physicians' diagnoses result from a lab test. This bodes well for clinical lab service providers, in particular, the two major players Quest Diagnostics (Madison, NJ, USA) and LabCorp (Burlington, NC, USA), who provide lab services to hospitals, according to recent market research.

In today's cost-cutting environment, part of the transformation being imposed on healthcare services includes shortened hospital stays. The average length of hospital stays in the United States is 4.7 days today, down from approximately 5.4 days in 1995 and 4.9 days in 2000. As a result, clinical labs have been pressured to improve the turnaround of test results so they can pick up the slack and help doctors to continue providing proper healthcare. This means they have also become a more valuable part of the treatment plan and are improving a physician's ability to treat patients like never before, according to healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information (New York, NY, USA).

"As hospital stays are shortened, contact between the physician and patient is reduced, which places a larger role on labs to gather, interpret, and deliver accurate information to the physician in a timely manner,” noted Melissa Elder, an analyst with Kalorama Information. "We expect to see an increase in the number of clinical labs, particularly in the independent sector, as these trends continue to influence the industry.”

In the report, Kalorama estimates that the clinical lab services market in the United States was about US$52.7 billion in 2009 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 4.1% to reach $61.9 billion by 2014. New technologies in testing will likely continue to drive growth in combination with an aging population, increasing disease incidence and prevalence, a greater focus on prevention and early detection, and new trends in personalized medicine. Some key areas of growth include genomic and esoteric testing, anatomic pathology, and specialized testing in oncology and infectious disease.

The clinical lab services market in the United States is highly competitive with a large number of players. However, two big players, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, dominate the industry with combined lab service revenues of nearly $12 billion in 2009. None other approach these two, but smaller companies have achieved visible growth in the past two years, especially in the area of specialty testing where they have cut into the pricing and volume of the major companies. Overall, the specialty segments enjoyed higher growth in test volume than the routine segments in 2009.

Kalorama Information supplies independent market research in the life sciences, as well as a full range of custom research services.

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