Lab docs demand a halt to shake-up

Laboratory doctors are demanding a halt to the shake-up of community labs until an advisory council can devise a national strategy to guide changes.

Patient safety would be a likely casualty of uncoordinated restructuring, the chief executive of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, Debra Graves, said yesterday.

At least eight district health boards have been going through extensive, money-saving changes to community or hospital laboratories, or both.

Three have contracted public hospital work to the private sector, prompting the senior doctors' union to blast the Labour-led Government for the "largest privatisation of secondary care since [National's] pro-privatisation health reforms were introduced in 1993".

The three Auckland boards say their community laboratory costs will drop by more than $15 million a year when their new contractor takes over next July and that Labtests Auckland is making rapid progress in setting up its operation.

Dr Graves delivered the college's demands to Health Minister Pete Hodgson last night after a meeting of 70 concerned pathologists in Taupo.

She said patients would be the losers, through potentially delayed and poorer quality diagnoses, from the massive upheaval caused by the health boards' tendering processes.

The changes could shake the foundations of pathology - the cornerstone of medicine, because pathologists diagnosed every detected cancer and were involved in the diagnosis of 70 per cent of diseases.

With just 206 pathologists (or the equivalent of 156 fulltimers), New Zealand's pathology workforce was already in a crisis, she said. It needed an extra 63 to reach the pathologist-per-capita level of Australia, which itself was suffering a shortage.

"There is an international shortage of [pathologists and lab scientists] and this uncertainty has led many to contemplate leaving New Zealand for countries where their professional services will be valued."

The college, concerned that pathologists have not been adequately consulted about the changes, has proposed a high-level national pathology advisory council to advise the minister and develop a national framework for pathology services.

The college's concerns reflect those of the Medical Association, which also wants a halt to further changes and a nationally coordinated laboratory services plan to be written. The association, chaired by Auckland pathologist Dr Ross Boswell, has called for an independent ministerial review to analyse and, if necessary, revisit health boards' laboratory decisions.

Mr Hodgson said last night that DHBs and the ministry "are confident that the fair and open tendering of lab contracts should not negatively impact on the number of pathologists working in New Zealand".