Lab results pass board scrutiny

Under community laboratory performance targets, Labtests and Diagnostic Medlab can have work taken off them if they fall short continuously.

The district health boards on Monday published tables comparing the two companies' performances for 15 week days in November and are generally satisfied with the results.

The tables list 16 key performance indicators (KPIs) which are part of the contracts, and 28 which are non-contractual. The contracts ask the companies to try to meet the non-contractual indicators.

But ongoing failure to meet the contracted indicators would leave the company concerned at risk of having the work related to that indicator taken away and having to pay for it to be done by another laboratory.

Labtests failed to meet contracted indicators on 16 occasions, 11 times on the requirement that at least 98 per cent of critical results are phoned through to the appropriate contact person within an hour of the result becoming available from the analyser.

Its daily performance on this ranged from 80 per cent to 100 per cent, but falling short on 11 days spread among 15 is well short of the contracts' trigger level for remedial action.

Labtests said yesterday that while there were occasions on which it had not met individual contractual KPI targets on a particular day, "these represent a small minority within the overall KPI targets achieved".

DML failed to meet the contracted turnaround time for enough patients on one non-urgent test on three days, and that it did not record, for four days, the percentage of critical results phoned through within an hour.

DML chief executive Arthur Morris said it did not fail to meet the turnaround time. He blamed this error on inadequacies of the reporting system.

DHB spokesman and Auckland board chairman Pat Snedden said the reports showed both companies were achieving the contracted indicators "pretty consistently".

* The reports can be obtained on the website www.ndsa.co.nz