Alcala Labs was founded by a partnership between a healthcare attorney specializing in the defense of individual and institutional healthcare providers and a physician with one of the largest pain management practices in Southern California. The lab grew out of frustration with existing laboratory providers and the conviction that Alcala Labs could do better. Smaller labs were not scientifically up to the task and, in many cases, were simply dishonest about the services they provided. Larger labs were either unresponsive or subcontracted critical complex lab services to unaccountable third-party labs .