Congress approved more stringent Medicare regulations, which forced testing laboratories to provide greater billing information. Although Roche Biomedical comprised labs located all over the country, the North Carolina operations became the company ’s fastest growing. This exodus had left a large number of vacant buildings available, and Roche Biomedical seized this opportunity to expand rapidly in Burlington. Only one, James, was still involved with the company at that time, and he stayed on as its head.īy the early 1980s, the town where Roche Biomedical was located had suffered a dramatic decline, as businesses fled to the suburbs. The company ’s original owners, the Powell brothers, became multimillionaires. Three years after Biomedical went public, Hoffman-La Roche purchased the lab for $163.5 million. With this infusion of funds, Biomedical moved from its old quarters to a nearby office and laboratory complex called York Court. The company offered $7.2 million worth of stock, which made the lab itself worth about $50 million. In 1979 Biomedical sold stock to the public for the first time. During the 1970s, the lab grew quickly, as scientific research in the area surrounding it intensified. James Powell was in the army, stationed in Washington, D.C., and he came down on the weekends to work. ![]() In 1970, the lab moved from its location at Elon College to an old empty hospital in Burlington. With 16 employees, the lab performed testing for physicians, hospitals, researchers, and small companies in the nearby North Carolina Research Triangle. Powell, a doctor, and John, to form Biomedical Reference Laboratories. In 1969, Thomas Powell joined with his twin brothers, James B. In the 1960s, Powell handed down the family business to his son, Thomas Edward Powell III. As the New Deal increased federal funding for education programs, Carolina Biological Supply prospered. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Elon College was unable to pay its faculty ’s salaries, Powell left the college and entered business full time. ![]() Unable to obtain suitable supplies for his students to perform their experiments, he founded Carolina Biological Supply in 1927 to provide dissection specimens. Their father, Thomas Edward Powell, Jr., had taught biology at Elon College for 15 years early in the century. In doing so, the brothers were joining a family tradition. Biomedical got its start in the late 1960s, when three brothers founded a clinical laboratory in the town of Elon College, North Carolina. This site was chosen because it was the home of Biomedical Reference Laboratories, the largest of the laboratories that Hoffman-La Roche had combined into Roche Biomedical. The headquarters for the newly formed Roche Biomedical were established in Burlington. Biomedical Reference Laboratories, Formation of Roche Biomedical: 1960s –80s In the following year, Hoffman-La Roche merged all of its laboratory properties into one company, which it called Roche Biomedical Laboratories. In 1982 the company made one of its most significant acquisitions in this area, buying a major independent clinical laboratory business, Biomedical Reference Laboratories of North Carolina. ![]() Throughout the 1970s, Hoffman-La Roche added to its research laboratory holdings. At that time, it purchased Kings County Research Laboratories, which was based in Brooklyn, New York. It was not until 1969, however, that the company entered the clinical laboratory business. In 1905 Hoffman-LaRoche began operations in the United States, with headquarters in Nutley, New Jersey. Roche Biomedical was created by Hoffman-La Roche, the American arm of Roche Holding, Limited, an international biomedical conglomerate based in Switzerland. After the 1995 merger that joined National Health with Roche Biomedical to create LabCorp, profits and share price plummeted until an aggressive cost competitor was removed, managed care restrictions were loosened, and new molecular diagnostic testing capabilities revived investor interest in the company. One of the company ’s predecessors, National Health Laboratories Incorporated, profited wildly until it was busted for Medicare fraud in 1992. It performs 4,000 different tests at 24 testing facilities and 900 service centers across the country. Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp) owns one of the largest medical testing labs in the United States. Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings
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