Labtests significantly improved - DHB

File photo / Richard Robinson

The improvement in service from Labtests, which sparked a string of complaints immediately after taking over medical laboratory testing in the Auckland region last year, has been significant, Auckland District Health Board says.

Labtests controversially won the contract over the incumbent provider, Diagnostic Medlab, but the service was plagued by delays and incorrect test results.

At a Parliamentary health select committee meeting today Labour MP Ruth Dyson asked health board representatives when the public and GPs could have confidence in medical testing again, considering the problems experienced.

Board chairman Pat Snedden accepted there were unacceptable problems in the first couple of months of Labtests taking over, and the confidence of the GP community, hospital clinicians and members of the public was "badly burned".

He said the initial experience was so bad that for those involved that it was always going to be a difficult task to win back confidence.

"But the situation we face at the moment is significantly different," he said.

The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia had come in to assess areas of concern, the health board itself had instigated intensive monitoring and there had been a "radical reduction" in complaints about the service, both from the public and the clinical community.

"We've seen a very high reduction in error rates in the delivery of the service, we've seen positions that were temporarily filled being filled on a permanent basis at levels of competence we are satisfied with."

Mr Snedden also said the appointment of New Zealand clinician Craig Marshall as Labtests chief executive had produced rapid results and improvements as he understood the anthropology of the delivery of the service.

National MP Jackie Blue referred to a recent survey showing that 42 per cent of GPs reported having received incorrect results and 55 per cent reporting significant or major problems with the Labtests service.

Mr Snedden said there was a significant lag between the timing of the survey and what was being experienced now, and benchmarks in many aspects of the service were now being met. He said there had been no critique or feedback in the past 21 days. "So I think we are moving forward."

International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) was next month due to benchmark the Auckland lab internationally, and Mr Snedden said the board was "cautiously optimistic" the results would be positive.

In terms of the DHB's financial performance, Mr Snedden said it had turned around what was a dire financial situation five years ago to a situation where budgets had been at break even level for the past two years.

"Given the size and scope of the work...landing the financial performance on a 50 cent coin with a jumbo jet is quite a feat to have to achieve," he said.

Mr Snedden said maintaining tight budgets into the future with the spending constraints faced would be a challenging task.

- NZPA