gragou,The public hospitals do most of their basic testing 'on...

gragou,

The public hospitals do most of their basic testing 'on site' with some samples sent to central labs. or even interstate for more complex testing.

The same occurs for the private labs. They however do not have the time pressures that exist for patients in hospitals. GPs are usually screening for illnesses or conditions that cannot be confirmed in the clinic. Samples collected will have a "turn around time" which will be much longer than at a hospital lab. The private lab. will therefore use machines capable of processing much larger numbers of samples at a central lab. in a capital city.

Acquisition of businesses that are doing the same work within the state will give economies of scale thereby increasing profits for the private 'conglomeration'

The testing methods are constantly being improved by automation. 'Turn around times' are vastly lower and accuracy is much higher than when we used
the manual techniques 40 years ago.
You can drive a 40 year old car on the roads but you could not possibly run a lab. using techniques from 40 years ago. The difference makes the auto industry appear like a mob of snails by comparison.