Labtests 'ahead of takeover schedule'

Labtests premises in Mt Wellington. Photo / Richard Robinson

Auckland's new community laboratory service says it is ahead of schedule in preparing to take over the regional contract on September 7.

"Overall we are going extremely well," Labtests chief executive Ulf Lindskog said yesterday while showing the Herald through his company's laboratory at Carbine Rd, Mt Wellington.

"In some areas we are well ahead of our operating timelines."

These include recruiting, setting up the 56 collection centres, installing laboratory analyser machines and the computer IT system.

"In recruitment we are going extremely well. We have filled around 80 per cent of all laboratory positions.

"We have recently started recruitment for phlebotomists [who take blood samples] and have done, as of last week, 130 interviews. Within three weeks we will have filled all 300 positions."

The company has fulltime-equivalent positions for 400 in the laboratory and 300 in the collection centres.

It says more than 2000 people have registered interest in Labtests jobs "and a number of former Diagnostic Medlab staff are now confirmed in key positions".

Mr Lindskog said collective agreements had been negotiated with unions and pay rates were the same or better than at current contract holder Diagnostic Medlab (DML).

"All key terms and conditions are identical."

Labtests was picked over DML by the region's three health boards for the contract, worth around $70 million a year. The service involves processing tests for around 10,000 patients a day.

DML has 80 collection centres. Labtests has increased its number by three, to 56, which is several more than DML had included in its unsuccessful contract bid.

Labtests will not reveal the sites of its collection centres for several weeks because non-notified resource consents for several are still being processed.

At the laboratory yesterday, conveyors were humming and analysers running, but several vacant places on the floor of the refurbished 5500sq m former textiles building were waiting for new machines.

Project manager operations Malcolm Stringer said the rest of the equipment would be installed within the next month.

Notable aspects of the project are:

* Doctors will be able to order lab tests electronically, a first for New Zealand, allowing better follow-up of patients who fail to have their tests done.

* The automated Siemens LabCell conveyor line of four biochemistry analysers (for blood tests such as cholesterol and liver function) and seven immuno-assay analysers (whose tests include HIV and prostate cancer) is, at 21.5m, the second-longest in the world. Staff call it the "sushi train", because its countless white "pucks", which hold patients' tubes of blood upright for sampling, look a little like sushi.

* Collection centres will open earlier than at present, mostly from 7am.

* The central part of the laboratory will be the most automated in Australasia and uses the most advanced robotics available to minimise handling of samples.

The laboratory project manager for the health boards, Tim Wood, said Labtests was on track to taking up the contract "and there are no issues".

The DHBs and Labtests want a staged changeover from DML, spanning several weeks, rather than an overnight jolt into the service. Mr Wood said he would discuss this with DML at a meeting on Thursday.