KEY POINTS:
No account has been taken of the impact on GPs of a new contract for medical tests in the Auckland region, the company which lost out in the process claimed today.
Diagnostic Medlab alleged in submissions to the High Court at Auckland that its rival's bid could be "wrong by millions of dollars".
Labtests, which won the $560m contract and is due to take over on July 1, is proposing to cut the number of collection points for medical samples from 80 to 43 and slash heftily the number of staff.
In its bid to the Auckand District Health Board it said it could provide collection and transport of samples for $10.86m, about $16m cheaper than Diagnostic MedLab.
Diagnostic Medlab's submission to the court - seeking a judicial review of the contract decision - said the $10.86m figure does not allow for the cost of GPs having to pick up the slack it claims will be created by the service cutbacks.
It says the ADHB should have scrutinised the figure, which appeared "extremely lean in terms of costing".
"There is simply no additional money to pay GPs without changing the whole model that Diagnostic Labtests put to the DHBs as the proposal," the submissions before Justice Raynor Asher claim.
Diagnostic Medlab says the ADHB panel overseeing the tender process only accepted a verbal guarantee that "the costing has been taken into account and is included in the Labtest offer".
"The panel appears to have accepted the phonecall explanation that there was no mistake, even though a rudimentary analysis ought to have revealed that the job could not have been done for that price," the submissions said.
The hearing is expected to end next week.
