This story co-produced through KUOW and American Public Media.
O
GS Labs, in Maha, which operates five sites in Washington, is being investigated by state and federal authorities.
A personal COVID-19 testing company that claims to be one of the largest in the state continues to operate across Washington despite a history of frustrating consumers and public health officials.
Nebraska-based GS Labs operates five Covid verification sites in Washington. The company began raising concerns weeks after opening its first site in the state, in December 2020, when some consumers and workers at the company complained about high costs and unnecessary verification. In the Spring, officials from the state and county fitness branch processed the consequences of a bunch of pending verification effects, some of which came 3 weeks after patient samples were collected. Even after one of those local officials sent a complaint to the state, GS Labs continued to operate through the fall of 2021. And it continued to produce effects weeks late, if at all, making public health officials on the verge of tracking and reporting those cases.
“Shit!!” Andrew Nguyen, then manager of the Snohomish County case investigation, wrote in October, after learning of another delayed result, in an email that he received a registration request. “This lab shouldn’t even be there with those overdue answers and lack of precision, etc. “
The disorders in Washington were exposed as part of a broader investigation into GS Labs, which has operated control sites across the country and lately has sites in six states. A team of reporters from APM Reports, the investigative reporting unit of American Public Media, spent nearly a year reviewing the company’s check history. Reporters interviewed more than 65 consumers, workers and public fitness officials, and reviewed public records from 11 states and federal court records from 4 lawsuits.
The investigation found that in at least six states, GS Labs, which suffered delays in screening results, some of which involved thousands of checks at a time, reported public fitness officials up to months late. A dozen workers in seven states told APM Reports that GS Labs is pressuring consumers to submit to all three types of checks offered by the company. Three health insurance companies, including Premera in Washington, accused the company of “abusive pricing. “Premera is suing GS Labs in federal court for attempting to exploit the pandemic by subjecting patients to “expensive and medically unnecessary checks” that, as of early January, amounted to $979 for a PCR check. GS Labs is fighting back in two of the cases (in Missouri and Minnesota) and Minnesota has filed a lawsuit against insurer Medica seeking payment of Covid-19 checks.
GS Labs officials rejected the maintenance requests. In response to written questions from APM Reports, a corporate spokesperson claimed that GS Labs had dealt with court cases about its performance, which happened largely when the company expanded its operations in the first two years of the pandemic. “While GS Labs aimed perfectly, few corporations can credibly claim to have achieved perfection in operating the pandemic,” the company said in a statement. GS Labs says the vast majority of the 2. 1 million tests it conducted in May were temporarily reported to the government of public fitness and helped save it from the spread of the virus.
“At a time when our communities desperately needed increased COVID testing capacity, GS Labs took steps to supply those tests, making an investment of more than $150 million in a company whose future good fortune and lifespan were incredibly uncertain,” the company’s brief said. By filling a critical gap in COVID testing, GS Labs has literally saved lives and we are incredibly proud of the service we have provided to the communities we serve. “
But the company’s track record in many of those communities has affected regulators.
The Washington State Department of Health is actively investigating GS Labs. The same goes for the government of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. USA
But the business is still running normally. In Clark County in southwest Washington, officials are concerned about the effect this may have on their community.
GS Labs began operations in Vancouver, Clark County, in the spring of 2021. For some time, the company followed the state’s reporting rules, which state that Covid-19 testing services will be required to immediately send positive effects to the local fitness branch so that officials can make contacts, track, and reduce the spread of the virus.
“Then they just stopped,” said Dana Nguyen, who heads Clark County’s Covid-19 reaction team. lacked demographic information.
This specific factor was resolved, but three weeks later, on June 10, Clark County received a phone call from an involved resident who had tested positive for covid and wanted to know why fitness officials hadn’t called to start tracing contact. Nguyen took this to call herself The news of the positive control made her perceive that GS Labs still did not communicate all the results. He feared the challenge posed a more widespread risk to the county’s health. “Overall, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. .
The next day, Nguyen spoke with Alex Blankenburg of City Ventures, the parent company of GS Labs in Omaha, and expressed his concern: GS Labs had not reported any PCR effects in Vancouver in the past 3 weeks. This included 26 positive cases.
Nguyen and Blankenburg had a call with state officials, in which it was “communicated very clearly” that an “immediate investigation” would begin, according to emails and a complaint Nguyen filed with the state.
But 10 days later, on June 21, GS Labs voluntarily rescinded its license to conduct immediate testing in Vancouver. Because the Vancouver facility is no longer licensed, the state fitness branch may simply not investigate, according to an email Nguyen obtained from Honora Estes of the state fitness branch.
In response to questions from APM Reports, GS Labs blamed its reporting difficulties in Washington on a “balkanized and inefficient” notification formula that required providers to send effects to individual counties in the patient’s residence. But according to the Washington Department of Health, a check would only be expected to present the effects in this way if it had not implemented the state’s preferred electronic notification method, which GS Labs had not done.
The closure of the Vancouver site meant Clark County would not deal with GS Labs for the next few months, however, in other parts of the state, the company’s demanding situations persisted. In the past, Snohomish County had won court cases from GS Labs consumers on conflicting effects. and had obtained enough backlogs from the company that health officials were waiting for them.
“Laboratoires GS. Il is a shock!” County case investigator Lorraine Bartosh wrote in an email to colleagues in May 2021 about the company’s pending PCR tests.
King County also experienced delayed effects in 2021, which overlapped with Clark County upheavals and lasted through the summer. On September 1, Blankenburg emailed King County epidemiologist Grant Donovan to inform him that 125 effects had been reported in up to 3 weeks. of delay because “our PCR volume increased 10-fold in the 2-week area. “
In its reports to APM Reports, GS Labs said the delay was due to “a significant increase in PCR testing due to Delta’s rise” and that the buildup led the company to make “significant investments to particularly expand its laboratory capacity. “
On Sept. 8, the state Department of Health sent GS Labs what some officials internally called a “bad actor” letter, warning of “poor quality of knowledge” and a “lack of quality assurance that is appropriate and jeopardizes the fitness of Washingtonians. “
Blankenburg responded by complaining that the state would not settle for the report format the company liked. He said the delays in testing were due to the “recent backlog of control requests. “patients, saying they mishandled their data when registering for appointments.
A few weeks later, Tami Lorene Zevenbergen took her daughter to be checked out at GS Labs in Lynnwood. They were only looking for an immediate check-up, but according to Zevenbergen, the nurse insisted that they have all three: an immediate check-up, a PCR check and an antibody test.
Zevenbergen had to restrain her 9-year-old daughter who screamed as a nurse rubbed her nose and stung her thumb.
Zevenbergen is one of at least six consumers and a worker who have complained to Washington’s attorney general alleging unnecessary evidence, abusive pricing, overdue effects or billing for unwanted evidence, according to public documents. Six of those court cases were closed. The Attorney General’s Office did not comment on Zevenbergen’s complaint. It also did not say whether it was investigating other court cases opposed to GS Labs, but many of the records it provided to APM Reports were redacted because they contained data collected “in the course of litigation. “or in anticipation of litigation,” as specified in the Washington Public Exemption Registration Act.
The insurance commissioner’s state office was also thought to be investigating the company for its billing practices, but “has not noticed any definitive scam fees at the state level,” according to an email written in April 2021 through Bruce Lantz, along with the office’s Criminal Investigations Unit. The director of the criminal investigations unit wrote an email in October stating that the company had agreed to defer to the Kansas Department of Insurance, which is investigating the company, according to documents received through APM Reports through a request for documents. .
Lantz also said his firm is willing to help any federal regulator with an investigation. The Office of the Inspector General of the U. S. Department of Health and Human ServicesThe U. S. Department of Homeland Security showed in an email to APM Reports that it is investigating GS Labs.
Since sending the “bad actor” letter in September, the state fitness branch has won more court cases about the company, either from consumers and the local fitnessarray department rejected interview requests, however, spokeswoman Katie Pope said the fitness branch launched an investigation into GS Labs in November.
When asked to comment on the investigations, the company wrote, “GS Labs gladly cooperated with all government surveillance. We welcome the opportunity to transparency our operations and answer any questions the government may have. “
GS Labs also said it “prioritizes transparency with public fitness agencies, even when that transparency doesn’t provide the best of the company. “However, according to the Washington Department of Health, GS Labs did not inform officials about an October inspection report related to its lab in Omaha, which processed all PCR tests collected through the company, whether in Nebraska, Washington or elsewhere. danger” to public health.
GS Labs corrected the disorders and resumed PCR in a new lab that opened in October.
One of the recent court cases in Washington came, again, from Clark County. On approximately September 1, after renewing its license, GS Labs reopened its Vancouver facility; On October 5, Nguyen alerted state officials that he had gained dozens of incomplete effects from the company and heard citizens say they had never gotten their effects from the company. In January, it sent another complaint after citizens said GS Labs incorrectly reported its effects to the company. county. This time, he said, the company solved the challenge quickly.
More than a year after Nguyen’s first call, GS Labs continues to operate at five locations in Washington. She says that when the fitness branch is unable to conduct thorough research on Covid cases, and when it affects other people personally, such as the caller in June 2021, citizens can lose religion in public gyms.
“If our network doesn’t accept what we do as true and we don’t have their most productive interests in mind, they may not let us help them,” Nguyen said.
Check out the ultimate local stories of the day with KUOW’s Today So Far newsletter.
KUOW is the No. 1 radio station in Puget Sound for news. Our independent, non-profit newsroom produces award-winning articles, podcasts, and events.