New laboratory service for lower North Island

New laboratory service for lower North Island

The lower North Island will have a new integrated community and hospital laboratory service from 1 November. The new service will see laboratory equipment upgraded in the region which will improve patient experiences, turnaround times, and access to tests results.

At a joint board meeting this morning, Wairarapa, Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast District Health Boards (DHBs) selected Southern Community Laboratories (SCL), as the provider of the new service.

The Boards selected SCL because of their experience providing quality laboratory services in New Zealand and Australia, the significant investment they will make in new laboratory facilities and equipment in the region, and their commitment to offering jobs to all current DHB laboratory staff.

Dr Virginia Hope, Board Chair of Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs said this decision hasn’t been made lightly.

“It has taken over two years to get to this point and the three boards have considered a wide range of information, including feedback from GPs, hospital staff, unions, and other interest groups, before making this decision.

“The new service will mean there is one seamless process for hospital and community laboratory services in the lower North Island.

“The majority of the changes will have no impact or not be evident to patients. For instance, SCL will have community collection centres in similar locations, mobile blood collection services will continue as they do now, and if patients currently have laboratory tests done for free they will remain free.

“We welcome the announcement made today that SCL intend to purchase the shares of Aotea Pathology, the current community laboratory provider in the Hutt and Wellington region. This decision will give the community additional assurance of service continuity,” says Dr Hope.

Dr Derek Milne, Board Chair of Wairarapa DHB says one of the biggest changes would be infrastructure.

“A new multi-million dollar hub laboratory for the three DHBs will be set up at Wellington Regional Hospital and laboratory equipment will be upgraded at Wairarapa, Hutt and Kenepuru Hospitals. This new state-of-the-art equipment will make it faster to get test results back and improve the work environment for staff.

“There will also be new IT systems to enable health professionals to easily see both community and hospital laboratory results together. This will prevent the unnecessary duplication that happens now and avoid patients having the same tests done at their GP clinic and then again at hospital.

“By substantially increasing our economies of scale and being more efficient, the three DHBs will also jointly save over $10 million a year which will be reinvested into services to improve the health of our communities,” says Dr Milne.

Integration of community and hospital laboratory services is not a new concept in New Zealand. Nearly half of DHBs already have an integrated laboratory service.

Media Contact: Jannel Carter 027 589 8884

Background information:

Laboratory services are already partially joined up in the Greater Wellington region:
There has been an outsourced integrated hospital and community laboratory service in the Wairarapa for many years,
There is a shared hospital laboratory service across Hutt, Kenepuru and Wellington Hospitals, and
Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs have had a joint contract for community laboratory services for nearly a decade.

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