Up to 53 Medlab jobs poised to go

LAWRENCE GULLERY
Medlab Hawke's Bay will cut up to 53 jobs by the end of this month when its contract to the Hawke's Bay District Health Board terminates.
The DHB has awarded the laboratory contract, initially for five years, to Southern Community Laboratories Hawke's Bay (SCL), beginning March 1.
It ends Medlab's operations in the Bay, stretching back to the 1960s.
Medlab staff will this week hear when they will finish work. Hawke's Bay Today understands Wednesday, February 28, will be the final working day for most.
Medlab managing pathologist Bruce van den Heever was not available for comment today.
Other staff at Medlab said they were not authorised to speak to the media and could not say whether the laboratory service would continue in Hawke's Bay after the contract was terminated.
In a letter to staff last week, however, Mr van den Heever said redundancy would be the likely final outcome for Medlab's staff. He said the laboratory service had considered four options: redeployment; relocation and redeployment; retraining and redeployment or redundancy.
He said because Medlab would no longer be operating, redeployment and retraining were "not viable options". A staffer said morale among Medlab workers was low. Some people soon to be out of work were applying for jobs overseas or locally, including those advertised last weekend by Southern Community Laboratories Hawke's Bay.
Employment within Medlab's parent company, Australia's Sonic Healthcare Group, was another possibility. SCL general manager Iain Christie said up to 18 jobs were available and were advertised nationally and locally last weekend.
"We have already received calls from local people and we've asked them to send in their CVs, their qualifications and what positions they would like to apply for. We will be interviewing people at the end of this month," Mr Christie said.
SCL had operated in Hawke's Bay for nine years and recently began spending money on upgrading its Hastings laboratory in anticipation of taking over the contract.
Medlab began operating in the Bay in the early 1960s, under management by doctors Ray Lycette and Bob Taylor, who are now retired. Havelock North's Peter Pedlow joined the two in 1965 and remained a consultant for Medlab until this year.
Dr Pedlow, also retired, believed the change of contract was primarily made so the DHB could save money by bringing some lab services in-house.
He was concerned the service to doctors and the community may decrease if the DHB intended to operate it "cheaply".
Specifically, he was worried that the DHB had no experience in specimen collection and the collection centres set up by Medlab, which were familiar to GPs and patients, would no longer be available under SCL.
Hawke's Bay District Health Board chief executive Chris Clarke said SCL would work in partnership with the Hawke's Bay Hospital laboratory. It would be business as usual; a full range of lab testing services would still be available throughout Hawke's Bay from Wairoa, Napier, Hastings and Central Hawke's Bay.
"While the arrangement has the potential to save millions of health dollars over the term of the contract, there are also huge clinical gains to be made from improving the way we work," he said.