The Minnetonka-based company announced a new long-term partnership, and a renewal of a second similar partnership late last week that provide it access to laboratory data and analytics.

UnitedHealthcare and Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) have established a long-term strategic partnership as the two organizations focus on ways to create more personalized care recommendations and a simpler consumer experience for the more than 48 million people enrolled in UnitedHealthcare plans. Quest will be in network for all UnitedHealthcare plan participants beginning Jan. 1, 2019¹.

As part of the expanding relationship, UnitedHealthcare and Quest will collaborate on a variety of value-based programs, bringing the same aligned incentives and enhanced patient experience to lab services as exist today in accountable care arrangements between UnitedHealthcare and more than 1,100 hospitals and 110,000 physicians. Working together, UnitedHealthcare and Quest will strategically change the way they are able to support consumers’ health care needs by using real-time data sharing to help better anticipate people’s care options – and reducing gaps in care – similar to the model UnitedHealthcare already uses to integrate medical and pharmacy data.

“Lab data is quickly becoming the personalized roadmap that identifies the path to the next best action for individual patients,” said Dan Schumacher, President and Chief Operating Officer, UnitedHealthcare. “With the addition of Quest to our network we will now be able to work together on an even broader scale, and we appreciate that Quest has helped develop a value-based approach to lab services that will focus on improving patient outcomes, better coordinating care with physicians, and meaningfully reducing costs.”

Quest Diagnostics annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our 45,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives.

UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest health insurance company offering a full line of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.2 million physicians and care professionals, and 6,500 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide. The company also provides health benefits and delivers care to people through owned and operated health care facilities in South America.

Meanwhile, UnitedHealthcare and LabCorp have renewed their long-term strategic partnership as the two organizations focus on ways to create more personalized care recommendations and a simpler consumer experience for the more than 48 million people enrolled in UnitedHealthcare plans. LabCorp will continue to serve as UnitedHealthcare’s exclusive national laboratory provider until Jan. 1, 2019

As part of the expanding relationship, UnitedHealthcare and LabCorp will collaborate on a variety of value-based programs, bringing the same aligned incentives and enhanced patient experience to lab services as exist today in accountable care arrangements between UnitedHealthcare and more than 1,100 hospitals and 110,000 physicians. Working together, UnitedHealthcare and LabCorp will strategically change the way they are able to support consumers’ health care needs by using real-time data sharing to help better anticipate people’s care options – and reducing gaps in care – similar to the model UnitedHealthcare already uses to integrate medical and pharmacy data.

Lab data is quickly becoming the personalized roadmap that identifies the path to the next best action for individual patients,” said Dan Schumacher, President and Chief Operating Officer, UnitedHealthcare. “The expansion of our relationship with LabCorp will enable us to work together on an even broader scale, and we appreciate that LabCorp has helped develop a value-based approach to lab services that will focus on improving patient outcomes, better coordinating care with physicians, and meaningfully reducing costs.”

[More information regarding Quest relationship; more information regarding LabCorp relationship.]