Labcorp vs Quest - precision and accuracy

I read an article recently saying that Quest is now focusing more on ‘mainstream’ laboratory testing and buying up physical real estate while Labcorp is now gearing more towards specialty/ research based testing.

Also have seen a few posts in which people have suggested that Labcorp may be more accurate. Tough to find formal information about how they compare head to head.

I have very little experience with either. Was curious as to how others felt the two stacked up.

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I don’t think it’s going to be easy to compare Quest and Labcorp on accuracy across different assays. I think you can count on the published ranges on a per assay basis and compare these. I’ve never done it, but I have strong suspicion you won’t see a big difference on most common measures.

You should be able to find details on a test menu page, like this one (it’s showing a strange image in the post, but the link is to a details page about fasting blood glucose):

https://www.labcorp.com/test-menu/26026/glucose

Sample text:

Although methods for glucose analysis exhibit low imprecision at the diagnostic decision limits of 7.0 mmol/L [(126 mg/dL), fasting] and 11.1 mmol/L [(200 mg/dL), postglucose load], the relatively large intraindividual biological variability (CVs of ~5% to 7%) may produce classification errors. On the basis of biological variation, glucose analysis should have analytical imprecision <3.4%, bias <2.6%, and total error <8.0%.1,2

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Comparison of Labcorp and quest is really tough, as they both maintain proper standards and functions really well. I Heard that Quest Overcharged Uninsured Patients, LabCorp Directly claims patients insurance directly from Medicare, Medicaid, and many insurance companies and managed care plans. LabCorp will soon be a preferred laboratory services provider. also, they are planning to be a part of the network serving all Aetna commercial and Medicare health plans and products.