Quest Diagnostics, HearUSA founder keeping busy
Dr. Paul Brown is 77, but still working on his lifetime goals.
When Dr. Paul Brown graduated from Harvard University, he promised himself he would one day accomplish three things.
He would become a millionaire, earn a black belt in karate and speak fluent French.
Now, at the age of 77, this Palm Beach Gardens resident is proud to report that he’s met two of these goals and the third one — learning French — is something he plans to conquer in the fall.
Brown is definitely a person who likes to make things happen, which is obvious if you look at his résumé. He received pathology training at Tufts New England Medical Center and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York and, in 1967, he founded Metropolitan Pathology Laboratories, a medical diagnostic lab that he started in a small apartment.
While moonlighting at a small Manhattan hospital to supplement his salary from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Brown said he was amazed to learn of the poor qualit y of the local laboratories and was just as surprised at the outrageous prices they were charging. So Brown decided to start the business that was also known as MetPath.
Following the later acquisition by Corning, the name was changed to Corning Laboratories and finally when Corning divested itself of the business, the name became Quest Diagnostics.
Brown said his goal for the laboratory business right from the start was to build a Fortune 500 company which, in 1967, required annual sales of $250 million.
“A goal which clearly indicated I had significant delusions of grandeur,” he said.
Today, Quest Diagnostics is said to be the largest blood-processing laboratory in the world. When Brown sold it in 1982, he had 3,600 employees in three different countries, and today its revenues are a whopping $7.4 billion.
A few years later, Brown decided to get into the hearing aid business.
Back then this type of business was, and still is, an unregulated section of the health care industry, he said, noting that most of the hearing aids were once sold by people who weren’t even audiologists.
Just like the laboratory business, Brown felt that the field needed improvement so he joined in, starting HEARx in 1986. That company is known today as HearUSA.
“Since that time audiol- ogists now have a Ph.D., but Medicare still does not pay for the appropriate testing by a qualified professional nor inspect facilities or even pay for hearing aids,” he said.
After leaving the hearing aid business, he suddenly found himself retired in South Florida, searching for something to do.
After retiring in 2010, his wife of 54 years, Cynthia, read in the paper that the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach was searching for volunteers. As a kid in Boston, Brown’s parents let him have an array of pets — from snakes to turtles to a baby alligator.
She suggested her husband sign up because she knew of his love for animals. The suggestion turned out to be one of the best things that has happened to Brown in his retirement.
Though he started out as a volunteer educating visitors about marine life, he’s spent the last few years there working as a professor of sorts, giving weekly lectures from January to May to packed audiences that focus on health care for seniors as well as the intricacies of sea turtles.
And the list of goals he made as a young man? He didn’t receive his black belt until the age of 51, after moving to Palm Beach Gardens from Massachusetts with Cynthia. Together they have two sons; one is a doctor in Alabama and the other is a lawyer in Switzerland.
He’s proud of his family and of his accomplishments and plans to continue adding plenty more to his résumé. His next plan? Brown also is a former swim teacher, so he hopes to teach adults how to swim in South Florida this year.
And don’t forget those French lessons, which he plans to master this year, too.