Brian Rudman: Medlab's behaviour borders on the pathological

If the bad losers at Diagnostic Medlab really cared for Aucklanders, they'd pack up their test tubes and drag their self-pitying selves back to their Australian base.

Disappointment at losing the lucrative contract to provide community medical laboratory services in Auckland is one thing. But dragging out the spurned-lover routine for more than three years is straying on the pathological.

Having fought the decision through to the Supreme Court - at a cost to those involved of $5 million to $6 million - and lost, DML has now taken to stalking the victors, rival Aussie company Labtests Auckland.

It hired fake journalists to interview patients about their experiences as they left Labtests' new collection centres, then circulated tape of any negative comments to the media. To its shame, state television ran them. A DML car also reportedly tailed a Labtests mobile blood-collector on a home visit.

This follows years of scaremongering "notices to patients", warning the service from the new operator "may" be poorer. On a practical level DML has gone out of its way to make the changeover as difficult as possible.

Despite requests from the district health boards, the loser refused to provide staff contact lists so the new provider could approach them with job offers.

The loser also refused to provide stored patient records and samples, and its database of doctors' and specialists' contact numbers - including after-hours cellphones.

For three years DML has predicted doom and gloom and thrown up obstacles and stirred the pot at every opportunity. Is it any wonder that an air of despondency is now abroad as the changeover takes place?

I guess there's nothing like a good medical scare story to get the blood pumping. Bird flu, swine flu and now blood test chaos - they come and go and 99 per cent of the time life goes on much as before.

The Medical Association was on its hind legs last week, calling for Government action. Amusingly, Labtests scored a good hit back, noting that the doctors' union's deputy chairman, Dr Paul Ockelford, is director of clinical services at DML.

Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson also jumped into the fray, describing the situation as "very disturbing" and saying he'd been told it was "just a matter of time before something significant goes wrong".

But that's the point, isn't it. In this critical time of changeover, a time of great stress, nothing significant has gone wrong. Perhaps a word of encouragement and congratulations might have been more supportive.

After all, this year the Ministry of Health reported 258 hospital botch-ups in the previous year, leading to 76 preventable deaths. Yet I don't recall the Medical Association demanding Government action then.

Most of the complaints about the new service relate to excess waiting times. As my colleague John Roughan observed on Saturday, that, coming from doctors, is richly amusing - "their waiting rooms are well-named", he said.

I'd add that if the queues at the new testing rooms are longer, that's not necessarily the fault of the new provider. Part of the specifications drawn up by the region's health boards required fewer collection rooms.

It was part of a cost-saving exercise that means the new service will save Auckland's public health service $15 million a year which can be spent on more hip replacements, dialysis treatment and the like.

I suspect if I am questioned after my next blood test, I might have a grump as well. My old testing rooms were just around the corner from home, across the road from my doctor's rooms. The service was usually immediate, with no one else cluttering the waiting room.

Talking to a neighbour about it closing down, she hadn't even realised it existed. Now I'll have to drive, or catch a bus, which will be a pain. But change was inevitable, whoever won the contract.

My industry thrives on doom and gloom. Indeed we live on it. When computerised type-setting replaced lead, the jeremiahs predicted the next day's papers would not appear. The same when keyboards replaced typewriters. Both times, papers appeared as usual.

Labtests has had to set up a system from the ground up to cater for 10,000 patients a day. Simultaneously, it has had to fight a guerrilla battle against a punch-drunk loser who refuses to stay down.

If Mr Paterson and the Medical Association want to attack anyone, the target is obvious.