Quest Diagnostics is proud to have been invited to participate in the 2017
World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting. Our Chairman, President and CEO Steve Rusckowski traveled to Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, for the annual event, which draws world and business leaders to discuss issues and spark ideas for action on regional and global scale.Rusckowski participated in a panel titled “Feel Better or Your Money Back,” focusing on innovations in value based health care. Moderated NPR’s Allison Aubrey, the hour-long discussion also included Dignity Health President/CEO Lloyd Dean, Medtronic Chairman/CEO Omar Ishrak, Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenz, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President/CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.As the conversation moved to precision medicine, Rusckowski framed diagnostics as the underlying data that drives health care decisions. “We’re moving away from a trial-and-error/fee-for-service world, particularly in the United States, to one that has much more precision.”Rusckowski also touched on the innovations Quest is making in genetic testing through partnerships, most notably with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and IBM Watson Health, describing how the collaboration matches patients to drugs and clinical trials that are specific to the genetic makeup of their disease. “It’s a great example of mating up the measurement to make sure what you’re delivering does work,” he said.In addition to adding our perspective to the panel discussion, Rusckowski was also interviewed by Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christophorus during the WEF event.Asked what he would want to be part of a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Rusckowski noted that lowering costs for the consumer is a key area that needs to be addressed. “One of the things that we haven’t really worked on is the affordability, even though we call it the Affordable Care Act, it’s really worked on access,” he said. “And how do we deal with really bending the cost curve of health care and really looking at real solutions of what we do about the growing cost of health care? It hasn’t been worked on and we need to spend some time on that.”Noting Quest’s recent performance in financial markets, Christophorus asked Rusckowski what is fueling the company’s success. “In 2012 we launched a new direction for the company called Our New Quest. We had a five-point strategy and we’ve been actively working on that as a management team, we’ve delivered against that plan,” he said. “And fortunately, the last three years we’ve had a nice total share of return for our shareholders. And we see a lot of future growth opportunity as well as to the value creation for this company as we go forward with our future plans."
Watch the full World Economic Forum “Feel Better or Your Money Back”
panel discussionWatch Quest Chairman, President and CEO Steve Rusckowski’s interview with Yahoo Finance
