Carilion Clinic acknowledged Friday that it is weighing options that could define the future of its for-profit Carilion Labs affiliate.

Carilion spokesman Eric Earnhart said money allocated to acquire other lab operations has been spent or committed.

"It light of this, and the [Carilion Labs] company's current point of maturation, Carilion hired Wachovia to explore all of its strategic options and advise on how best to proceed," Earnhart wrote in an e-mail.

"No definitive decisions have been made."

When contacted Friday evening, Earnhart said he did not have access at the end of the business week to people who could report Carilion Labs' total employment and 2007 revenues.

The April 2008 issue of newsletter Laboratory Economics reported that Wachovia was brokering a bidding process for Carilion Labs and that four bids had been submitted in mid-March.

Newsletter publisher Jondavid Klipp speculated in that issue that Carilion Labs, like other labs, was "being pressured by rising costs (especially employee salaries and benefits and information technology) in the face of declining reimbursement."

In August 2005, Carilion announced a plan to build on the success of its Carilion Consolidated Laboratory operation to create a multistate, for-profit subsidiary -- Carilion Labs.

Dr. Ed Murphy, president and chief executive officer of what was then Carilion Health System, said anticipated profits from the new company could help support regional health care offerings, such as cardiac care and emergency and trauma services.

Murphy said then that projections suggested Carilion Labs and its regional subsidiaries could, after a few years, be a $300 million-a-year business, establish a presence across much of the East Coast and employ up to 1,520 people companywide. There were 600 employees involved at the time of the announcement.

In early January, Carilion Labs reported it had acquired Innovative Pathology Services, an anatomic and cytology lab based in Knoxville, Tenn. At the time, Carilion Labs provided laboratory services in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Less than a year after its 2005 Carilion Labs announcement, Carilion Health System described another ambitious plan that involved a radical transformation.

The system became Carilion Clinic and described a plan to remake itself in the model of the Mayo Clinic, a physician-led health care and research center in Minnesota. Carilion has been hiring physicians to staff the clinic.

In addition, Carilion Clinic and Virginia Tech are collaborating on an effort to create a new medical school in Roanoke.

Earnhart did not comment about whether the sale of Carilion Labs might help fund some of Carilion Clinic's new endeavors.