Health Minister Gatean Barrette is poised to reorganize the province's hospital laboratories in order to save money, but many health professionals say the plan is not ready, citing fears medical samples will be lost or damaged and patient care will be delayed.
The plan is called Optilab and it exists elsewhere in Canada. In the 2013 version of the plan, lab activities were to be concentrated at five designated hospitals in Montreal.
Now it's down to two hospital centres, the CHUM and the MUHC. Each mega-lab will be responsible for analyzing tens of millions of tests coming from a cluster of other smaller hospitals and clinics.
Only five hospitals will be allowed to maintain microbiology and pathology labs.
Nathalie Rodrigue, president of the order of medical technologists, said she is very concerned and that the government isn't prepared. She explained there's no computer system in place to track samples yet, and no transportation system with quality control.
She said the system isn't officially in place yet, but something like it is already happening. She recently learned that at the Gatineau hospital, delays mean one in four samples is rejected.
“They told us we have to reject a lot of samples because the delay is too long,” she said.
Delayed samples mean delayed results and delayed treatment for patients, especially if the sample is no longer good.
The regions may be hardest hit when a sample has to be transported nearly 400 kilometres away.
“For [a complete blood count] you're supposed to take the blood and do the test within four hours. So if you're in Gaspe and they have to send it to Rimouski, we don’t understand how they're going to do that,” she said.
But Barrette is clear on why he wants to do that – to cut costs. He said it would save “millions and millions of dollars.”
Critics say they will wait for more precise numbers and information before they'll be convinced the added value is there.
