How to put your Quest and Labcorp results in one place
Plenty of people end up with results from both Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp. Your insurer changes which lab is in network, a new doctor sends you to the other one, or a specialist uses a different lab from your primary care practice. Each company has its own portal, MyQuest and MyLabcorp, and neither shows the other’s results. So the history of a test you have checked every year is split in two.
Putting them together takes three steps: download from each, line the results up, and read the combined trend with the lab switch in mind.
Step 1: Download from each lab
Both labs offer the same kinds of exports, described step by step in our guides:
- How to download your lab results from Quest covers PDFs from MyQuest, sending results to Apple Health, a written request, and your doctor’s portal.
- How to download your lab results from Labcorp covers the official report from MyLabcorp and the same other routes.
For a long history, download every report you can find in each portal as a PDF. If a report is missing, the lab’s records request or your doctor’s portal usually has it.
A shortcut on iPhone. Both labs can send results to Apple Health, so on an iPhone you can see Quest and Labcorp results in one list there. That gets you one place to look, but only on the phone, and not as a file you can keep or chart.
Step 2: Line the results up
Once you have both sets, put each result into one table: date, test, value, unit, reference range, and which lab. You can do this in a spreadsheet; our lab results spreadsheet template has the columns, and the lab PDF to spreadsheet tool pulls values out of a Quest or Labcorp PDF so you do not have to type them.
Four things will not match between the two labs:
- Test names. The labs name the same test differently, with extra words for the specimen or method. “Glucose” and “Glucose, Serum” belong on one line; so do “Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy” and “25-Hydroxyvitamin D”. Pick one name per test.
- Units. Both report most tests in US units, but not always the same one, and a few tests come in more than one. Lipoprotein(a), for example, is reported in mg/dL by some labs and nmol/L by others, and the two cannot be converted with one factor. Check the unit on every row, and convert where you can with the lab unit converter.
- Reference ranges. Each lab sets its own, so the same value can be flagged at one and not the other. Keep each result’s own range rather than applying one lab’s range to everything.
- Dates. Use the date your blood was drawn. Reports sometimes show the date the report was issued, a day or two later.
Watch for duplicates. A test your doctor ordered can appear in the lab’s portal and in your doctor’s portal. If you import from both, keep one copy.
Step 3: Read the trend, allowing for the switch
When two labs measure the same thing with different instruments, their results can differ by a few percent even for the same blood. For many tests that is too small to matter. For some it is not. Hormones measured by immunoassay, such as testosterone, and vitamin D are known for differing between methods; our posts on testosterone and vitamin D go into the details.
So when you see a jump, check whether the lab changed at the same point:
- The lab changed and the result jumped once, then held steady. It may be the method, not you. Ask your doctor whether the difference matters for that test.
- The result kept moving in the same direction across both labs. That is a trend worth taking seriously.
- The result moved but stayed within both labs’ ranges. Compare it with your own history, not the range. Your doctor sees only the labs they ordered explains why that history matters.
Marking each point on a chart with its lab makes this easy to see. In a spreadsheet, add a column for the lab and color the points by it. Why lab reference ranges differ explains the reasons behind lab-to-lab differences in more depth.
Where HealthViewer fits
HealthViewer is a lab results tracker for Mac and Windows that reads Quest and Labcorp PDFs directly, along with reports from Mayo, MyChart, and others, and connects to Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth, and eClinicalWorks patient portals. Its Test Catalog merges the two labs’ names for the same test so they chart as one series, while each result keeps its own unit and reference range. It shows you everything it read before saving, and marks results you already have so a test imported from both a lab and your doctor’s portal is not stored twice. Your results stay in an encrypted file on your computer.
For the full process, read how to track your lab results over time.