Bio-Reference Laboratories Announces FDNY Laboratory Testing Contract; New York City Fire Department Contract Valued at nearly $5M.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE2K

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J.--(BW HealthWire)--Aug. 9, 2001

Bio-Reference Laboratories, Inc. (NADSAQ: BRLI) announced today that its Medilabs Division has been awarded the contract to provide clinical laboratory services to the New York City Fire Department for the next five years.

The Contract is valued at $4,983,050 and takes effect immediately.

The FDNY contract significantly expands the role that Bio-Reference plays in providing laboratory services to the State of New York. Bio-Reference has already been providing services to Rikers Island since January 1, 2001 and under other large scale administrative contracts with clinic-based facilities (both public and private in nature), and it has held the contract to provide laboratory services to over seventy prison facilities throughout the State of New York since the Department of Corrections first awarded a unified contract nearly three years ago.

Bio-Reference Laboratories is a full service clinical laboratory with capabilities of providing not only routine testing, but specialized and esoteric testing such as PCR and genomics testing and utilizing such specialized methodologies as FISH, Immunohistochemistry and Flow Cytometry. Bio-Reference is further able to enhance its core laboratory offerings through its CareEvolve connectivity solution and its PSIMedica analytics unit.

About Bio-Reference Laboratories, Inc.

The Company is the largest independent regional clinical laboratory in the Northeast and has major market positions in physician offices, nursing homes and correctional institutions. The Company's wholly owned subsidiary, CareEvolve, is a physician-centric connectivity solution that seeks to enhance physician-patient and physician-payer electronic communications on a secure basis, including communicating laboratory results, e-mail, prescriptions, payer verification and eligibility, as well as offering many other value-added Internet based services to its physician members. PSIMedica, a business unit of the Company, is a clinical knowledge management (CKM) organization offering an array of information solutions for reducing healthcare costs and improving quality performance.

This press release contains certain "forward-looking" statements, as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and the actual results and future events could differ materially from management's current expectations. Such factors are detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with the regulatory authorities having jurisdiction.

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