Quest Diagnostics, the New Jersey-based diagnostics maker, will close its Troy, Michigan, laboratory by early May, laying off 57 workers at the facility.
The company, which provides clinical lab services, operates four labs in Michigan that employ about 540 people. Some employees at the Troy site will be eligible to apply for jobs at other locations, Crain’s Detroit Business reported.
"As our company responds to market forces and reimbursement challenges, we have determined we can be more efficient by reducing touch points in our testing process," Denny Moynihan, a company spokesman, told Crain’s.
Quest acquired Summit Health in 2014, which, at the time, employed about 175 workers across the U.S.
Last July, Quest completed its acquisition of two laboratory businesses in Texas, establishing a foothold in the southwestern U.S. with a new national “center of excellence” for cancer precision diagnostics.It was part of the company’s move to scale up in precision medicine.
Since President Barack Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative in 2015, several other players have been working to scale precision medicine, such as San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives in Colorado.