Incyte Diagnostics, of Spokane Valley, says it has acquired the assets of Accupath Laboratory Services Inc., a one-pathologist lab in Seattle, and Accupath’s former owner, Dr. Robert R. Hasselbrack, has joined Incyte, where he will be heading up a company outreach program. 

Kim Hagerty, spokeswoman for Incyte, declines to disclose the terms of the transaction, which was completed July 1, but says Incyte’s Bellevue laboratory has begun servicing Accupath’s former clients. It wasn’t immediately clear whether several support-staff employees who had worked at Accupath would be joining Incyte as well.

The acquisition was Incyte’s second this year. On May 1, it acquired Yakima, Wash.-based pathology group Medical Center Laboratory, which it has rebranded as Incyte. Last year, it completed a sizable merger with Bellevue-based Eastside Pathology Inc.

Incyte provides tissue and cell testing and lab oversight services to hospitals and physicians’ offices throughout the Northwest. It now employs about 220 people at laboratories in Spokane Valley, Bellevue, Yakima, Pullman, and Walla Walla, Hagerty says. It was founded by pathologists in 1957 to provide anatomic diagnostic services in the region.

Accupath had provided clinical and anatomic pathology services in the Seattle area for more than 50 years. Clinical pathology usually involves bodily fluids, while anatomical pathology addresses body tissues. 

In his new role at Incyte, Hasselbrack will focus on developing and implementing a “next-generation pathology practice” outreach program to clinicians throughout the Northwest, Hagerty says. The program stems from a growing desire among Incyte pathologists to become more personally engaged with health care providers and their patients than they’ve been in the past, she says. 

Traditionally, pathologists have been regarded as “downstream doctors,” demonstrating their professional expertise at the laboratory bench and behind the microscope long after disease already has occurred, Hagerty says.

Now, she says, Incyte pathologists want to move beyond that persona and become more involved with “upstream medicine,” where they can function in real time and more visible roles as wellness facilitators and “preventionists,” helping clinical colleagues provide the best possible care.

Hasselbrack will be Incyte’s full-time advocate in promoting that shift, she adds.

Hagerty had said earlier that the Yakima acquisition was part of a long-term strategy by Incyte to become a regional pathology center. She says the acquisition of Accupath’s assets also reflects a consolidation trend in the pathology field, stemming from the inability of one- to five-pathologist labs to stay competitive, due partly to technological advances.