Labcorp Plans Layoffs at Newly Purchased Lab

Labcorp has announced “preliminary plans to downsize” following a series of acquisitions of Portland hospital laboratories.

Last year the North Carolina corporation announced it was purchasing the labs of Providence and Legacy Health, two of Portland’s largest hospital systems. WW reported earlier this year that the transition was anything but seamless. Doctors reported delays in receiving patient test results, raising questions about why state regulators didn’t even look at the sale.

Now the other shoe has dropped. Labcorp is reducing redundancies via layoffs.

“We have announced preliminary plans to downsize the Holladay Park laboratory,” reads a statement emailed to doctors last Friday and obtained today by WW.

The Holladay Park facility, which Legacy spent $20 million to build in Northeast Portland in 2016, will continue to run “anatomic pathology and inpatient microbiology” tests. All others “will be transferred to our Halsey laboratory and other Labcorp specialty laboratories.”

In other words, tests once run at Legacy’s former lab will now be run at Providence’s. The letter blames “rising health care costs.”

It’s not immediately clear how many people will lose their jobs. Labcorp employees at Legacy’s former labs won a hard-fought unionization battle last year.

Neither Labcorp or its union, the Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals, responded to a request for comment.