Money for poor cuts load on Labtests

Photo / Greg Bowker

A primary health organisation is paying GP clinics to take patients' blood samples in a move aimed at easing the pressure on Labtests.

It has been acknowledged as a subsidy to the new Auckland laboratory company, and is being paid from a Government fund intended to reduce health inequalities for Maori, Pacific Islanders and those from poor areas.

Procare Network North, which serves 100,000 patients in Auckland's north and north-west, decided late last week to pay $5 to contracted clinics for each blood sample their nurses took.

Three clinics have opted to take part in the scheme.

Dr Peter Didsbury, chairman of Procare Health, which provides management services to Procare Network North, said last night the move was to ease the pressure of the transition from Diagnostic Medlab to Labtests.

Under a $70 million-a-year contract with the Auckland region's three district health boards, Labtests has taken over community laboratory testing, starting with the Counties Manukau health district on August 10, and ending with Waitemata.

Procare, which has three primary health organisations (PHOs) in Auckland and represents half the region's more than 1100 GPs, has been monitoring the transition and has found GPs are concerned about patients' waiting times at the new blood collection centres and the time it takes for some test results be be returned.

"We are still waiting for Labtests to get all their systems working well so they have the efficient system we had hoped they would have," Dr Didsbury said.

Asked if the payment by the PHO to clinics was effectively a subsidy to Labtests, he said: "Yes and the PHO board felt that it was important for patients."

But Labtests chief executive Ulf Lindskog strongly denied it was a subsidy to his company.

"This is a subsidy from Procare to their practices," he said. "Labtests is providing the collection centre infrastructure for 100 per cent of collects in the region.

"Procare made this decision without discussion with Labtests or the DHBs".

He said waiting times have not been an issue in Auckland or in Labtests' Waitemata collection centres.

Dr Didsbury said the PHO had health board approval for the move, which was financed from a fund called Services to Improve Access.

The Health Ministry website says the fund is available "for all PHOs to reduce inequalities among those populations that are known to have the worst health status: Maori, Pacific people and those living in [deprived areas]". Dr Didsbury said the blood collection scheme was an appropriate use of the money because it would improve patients' access to testing.

The ministry's chief adviser on primary health care, Dr Jim Primrose, said health boards could decide how to spend the fund, but added: "It would be interesting to understand the DHB's rationale on the use of the funding."

Waitemata planning and funding manager Dale Bramley said the health
board had not received a formal request from the PHO to use Services to
Improve Access funding for the scheme.

Mr Bramley said the board would be willing to look at such an application, but it would need to meet the high-needs criteria.