Labtests short on specialists

Photo / Dean Purcell

The number of pathologists working at Labtests has dropped to 12, the laboratory company's website indicates.

Labtests, which took over the Auckland region community laboratory testing contract in August and September, had said previously that it intended to employ the equivalent of 17.2 fulltime pathologists.

The company from which it took the district health boards' work, Diagnostic Medlab, employed the equivalent of 24 fulltime pathologists for the contract.

An Auckland pathologist familiar with many staff in the market calculated from the pathologists listed on Labtests' website as working for the company that it now had 10.5 such "fulltime-equivalent" specialists.

Labtests would not answer questions the Herald put to it yesterday on the number of pathologists it now had, the apparent shortage and whether this was causing it any problems.