Stock Holders come first - Clinicians, Patients and Employees go to the end of the line.
Pros
Compensation and benefits are good for licensed personnel. Good teamwork attitude in the labs. Many of the techs have good leadership, management and teaching skills. Unfortunately there is a trend to go cheap and hire people with less training or education.
Cons
Quest's primary concerns are the stock holders and their stock price. The clinicians, patients and employees merely create challenges to the bottom line. The goal is to perform a test as quickly and inexpensively as possible. The right answer has no value. What has value is an answer that will not expose the company to legal liability. As a business model Quest is great. I only worry when my doctor sends my blood to Quest or any other commercial lab and wants to make a diagnosis based on the result of one lab test. Since Quest is so cost conscious, make sure your work environment is safe since you are working with pathogens and chemicals. Also be a good community member and make sure your location is not dumping too many toxic chemicals down the sewer system. Remember, Quest does not care about your health only their legal position after an incident. I will call them incidents since Quest likes to preach that all accidents are preventable i.e. any screw-ups are your fault.
