Business Strategy

Our mission is to be recognized by our customers and employees as the best provider of comprehensive and innovative diagnostic testing, information and related services. The principal components of this strategy are to:

•   Compete Through Providing the Highest Quality Services: We intend to become recognized as the quality leader in the healthcare services industry.  We continue to implement our Six Sigma and standardization initiatives throughout all aspects of our organization.  Six Sigma is a management approach that requires a thorough understanding of customer needs and requirements, root cause analysis, process improvements and rigorous tracking and measuring.  We have integrated our Six Sigma initiative with our initiative to standardize operations and processes across the Company by adopting identified Company best practices.  We plan to continue these initiatives during the next several years and expect that successful implementation of these initiatives will result in measurable improvements in customer satisfaction as well as significant economic benefits.  

•   Capitalize on Our Leading Position Within the Laboratory Testing Market: We are the leader in the core clinical laboratory testing business offering the broadest national access to clinical laboratory testing services, with facilities in substantially all of the major metropolitan areas in the United States. We currently operate a nationwide network of approximately 1,925 patient service centers, principal laboratories located in more than 30 major metropolitan areas throughout the United States and about 155 smaller “rapid response” laboratories that enable us to serve physicians, managed care organizations, hospitals, employers and other healthcare providers and their patients throughout the United States.  We believe that customers will increasingly seek to utilize laboratory testing providers that have a nationwide presence and offer a comprehensive range of services and that, as a result, we will be able to profitably enhance our market position.

•   Continue to Lead Innovation: We intend to build upon our reputation as a leading innovator in the clinical laboratory industry by continuing to introduce new tests, technology and services. As the industry leader with the largest and broadest network and the leading provider of esoteric testing, including gene-based testing, we believe that we are the best partner for developers of new technology and tests to introduce their products to the marketplace. Through our relationship with members of the academic community, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, and emerging medical technology companies that develop and commercialize novel diagnostics, pharmaceutical and device technologies, we believe that we are one of the leaders in transferring technical innovation to the market (see “Our Services - New Test Introductions”).

We believe that, with the unveiling of the human genome, new genes and the linkages of genes with disease will continue to be discovered at an accelerating pace, leading to research that will result in ever more complex and thorough predictive, diagnostic and therapeutic testing. We believe that we are well positioned to capture much of this growth.

We continue to invest in the development and improvement of our information technology products for customers and providers by developing differentiated products that will provide friendlier, easier access to ordering and resulting of laboratory tests and patient-centric information. In February 2003, we launched our proprietary eMaxx ^® Internet portal to physicians nationwide, which enables doctors to order diagnostic tests and review laboratory results online, as well as check patients’ insurance eligibility in real time and view clinical information from many sources.

•   Pursue Strategic Growth Opportunities: We intend to continue to leverage our network in order to capitalize on targeted strategic growth opportunities both inside and outside our core clinical laboratory testing business. These opportunities are more fully described under “Strategic Growth Opportunities” and include expanding our gene-based and specialty testing capabilities, developing information technology products for customers and providers, expanding our geographic presence across the United States, and continuing to make selective acquisitions.

•   Leverage Our Satisfaction Model: Our approach to conducting business states that satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers, which in turn benefits our stockholders. We regularly survey our employees and customers and follow up on their concerns. We emphasize skills training for all employees and leadership training for our supervisory employees, which includes Six Sigma training to manage high-impact quality improvement projects throughout our organization, and annual compliance training. We are committed to engaging each of our employees with dignity and respect and expect them to treat our customers the same way. We believe that our treatment and training of employees, together with our competitive pay and benefits, helps increase employee satisfaction and performance, thereby enabling us to provide better services to our customers.