New Owner Combines AIT Labs, Texas Company
(Image courtesy of AIT Laboratories)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based AIT Laboratories Inc. has merged with an out-of-state company. The combined business, called AIT Laboratories, a HealthTrackRx company, will be headquartered in Texas.
HealthTrackRx currently operates a toxicology lab in Denton, which is outside of Dallas. Ancor Capital Partners is the private equity firm that owns the company. It says AIT’s GuideMed narcotics prescription clinical support program will be based in Indianapolis and be led by Senior Vice President of Health and Patient Care System Scott LaNeve. "With HealthTrackRx, we can now provide clinicians maximum information while containing costs for payers,” he said. GuideMed was launched by AIT in 2014.
The forensic toxicology business of AIT will operate as an independent company.
HealthTrackRx Chief Executive Officer Doug Brenner says "the combination of HealthTrackRx’s technology platform and AIT’s recognized leadership in toxicology enable us to create a leading standard in medication monitoring and drug testing. Combining AIT’s GuideMed clinical services with HealthTrackRx’s innovative testing protocols will create a basis for preventing and treating substance use disorder."
Officials say the move became official July 1st and AIT employees were offered positions with the new company.
The American Institute of Toxicology was founded 26 years ago in Indianapolis. Michael Evans started the company with five employees and it eventually grew to employ hundreds in Marion County. In recent years, AIT’s work force has dwindled amid a slowdown in Medicare reimbursements and revenues. In May, the latest in a series of settlements involving trustees of the AIT Laboratories Employee Stock Ownership Plan and Evans was also reached. The U.S. Department of Labor says, in all, more than $7 million has been recovered for the plan’s participants and beneficiaries as a result of losses associated with Evans and other executives receiving "an amount far higher than the stock’s fair market value" when they sold the business to employees.