The California Department of Public Health's Valencia Branch Laboratory won't be issued sanctions after the department investigated the COVID-19 testing lab for much of the year, according to a Nov. 22 The Press Democrat report.

Dublin, Ohio-based lab product manufacturer Cardinal Health is opening its automated supply management business to clinical labs, the company said in a Nov. 18 news release.

Hawthorne, N.Y.-based medical robotics company Clarapath netted $16 million in follow-on financing after a previous close of $16 million in series B funding, the company said in a Nov. 18 news release.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought higher visibility to medical labs and the people who make them run. Becker's Hospital Review has compiled job data for lab technicians and distilled it to the most essential data points.

A Merck lab worker in Pennsylvania found five vials labeled "smallpox" in a lab freezer, according to a Nov. 18 New York Times report. The worker was masked and gloved.

Northfield, Ill.-based Medline, the largest private medical supply manufacturer and distributor in the U.S., landed a $5 million deal with Edinburg, Texas-based DHR Health, the company said in a Nov. 16 news release.

HHS is withdrawing a 2020 policy that limited the FDA's review process of certain lab tests, including some COVID-19 tests, the agency said Nov. 15.

Cancer-focused genetic testing services firm NeoGenomics, based in Fort Myers, Fla., has named Singular Genomics President and COO Dave Daly to its board, according to a Nov. 14 Business Observer report.

Leonel Palatnik, 42, co-owner of Dallas-based Panda Conservation Group, a medical lab company, was sentenced to 82 months in prison for his role in a $73 million Medicare kickback scheme, according to a Nov. 9 Justice Department news release.

A now-closed New Jersey lab could have to pay hundreds of patients back for allegedly selling and administering fake COVID-19 tests, according to a Nov. 9 report by NBC affiliate WNBC.

An internal audit found that the University of Iowa's State Hygienic Laboratory left as much as $1.1 million on the table, thanks to inconsistent billing and document collection, according to a Nov. 8 report in The Gazette.

An Arkansas man who owned and managed several diagnostic testing laboratories was indicted in an alleged $100 million fraudulent billing scheme, the Justice Department said Nov. 3. 

A joint venture between Los Angeles-based real estate firm Hatchspaces and Denver-based healthcare developer NexCore Group is building a life sciences wet lab in West Los Angeles, the companies said in a Nov. 3 news release.

The American Society for Clinical Pathology and the Joint Commission are kicking off a lab recognition program, the organizations said in an Oct. 27 news release.

Cambridge, Mass.-based blockchain platform Artifacts is partnering with South Bend, Ind.-based University of Notre Dame's Distributed Pharmaceutical Analysis Lab to combat the circulation of fake and substandard drugs, the university said in an Oct. 20 news release.

Nevada-based clinical laboratory MD Labs and two of its owners and co-founders will cumulatively pay between $11.6 million and $16 million to resolve allegations that they billed federal programs for medically unnecessary urine drug testing, according to a Justice Department statement.

Before the pandemic, many laboratories were already facing financial challenges due to severe downward pricing pressure caused by multi-year price cuts to the Medicare Part B clinical laboratory fee schedule.

An Oakdale, Minn. lab owned by Piscataway, N.J.-based Infinity BiologiX experienced an unspecified disruption in services over the weekend of Oct. 16-17, according to Saint Paul, Minn., ABC affiliate KSTP.

Jae Lee, former CEO of the now-defunct Northwest Physicians Laboratory in Bellevue, Wash., agreed to pay $1.1 million to resolve a civil case involving the lab allegedly offering referrals in exchange for cash payments, an arrangement commonly known as a kickback, according to a Justice Department news release.

A University of Illinois Chicago lab has been tracking COVID-19 in the city's wastewater and sharing the results with local public health agencies, according to WTTW.