Labcorp plans layoffs at newly acquired lab

Labcorp has announced “initial plans to reduce headcount” following a series of acquisitions at a Portland hospital.

Last year, the North Carolina-based corporation announced it was buying Providence and Legacy Health laboratories, the two largest hospital systems in Portland. WW reported earlier this year that the transition had been far from smooth. Doctors reported delays in receiving patient test results, raising questions about why state regulators hadn’t even looked into the sale.

Now the other shoe has dropped. Labcorp is reducing its layoffs.

“We have announced preliminary plans to reduce the size of our Holladay Park lab,” reads a statement emailed to doctors last Friday and obtained by WW.

The Holladay Park facility, which Legacy spent $20 million building in Northeast Portland in 2016, will continue to perform “anatomical pathology and hospital microbiology” testing. All others “will be transitioned to our Halsey Lab and other Labcorp specialty labs.”

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

It’s unclear how many jobs will be lost. Labcorp workers at the former Legacy labs won a hard-fought unionization effort last year.

Neither Labcorp nor the Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals union responded to requests for comment.