Patients are losing Alberta’s public-private medical labs battle, November 1, 2023
Alberta’s medical labs have shifted between public and private delivery for decades, often depending on what party is in government, and now the province’s auditor general is investigating. CBC’s Christine Birak breaks down the medical and political saga that’s cost millions and had a negative impact on patient care.
CBC News
@allthecanadianpolitics, @abpoli
I had my own brush with DynaLife three times in the last year, wait times and organization were horrendous at a lab that has always been high volume but was much better managed when they were public.
Their waiting room was not just crammed full, the wait times were so long they were paging people on their cell to return from their cars or from the mall across the way--some simply left without a word. Walk-ins alone were looking at least a hour seated wait time.
The single queue to check in was at least 30 minutes standing, crammed in to the point people had to step out of the way of the doors. It included pregnant people, elderly, and others in need of priority with mobility aids and other conditions. Appointments were not immediately separated out from walk-ins or even simple drop off, the only instruction was for everyone to wait for the one person processing. Even when the line extended outside at the same location because of COVID social distancing it moved more efficiently.
There was clearly no regular process for stopping the line and refusing more patients despite this routinely being the case by the summer. While I was there one poor tech was delegated to end intake for the day early because they simply were overcapacity. After scrambling to make a couple signs to tape to the doors, they were completely ignored.
No one enforced a cutoff, the patients that were told they were the end remained silent or continued to open the door for more people. By the time staff reached what should have been the tail-end there was a a full queue again. I learned later that short of actually closing, policy was to continue to accept everyone in line and there was at least another hour after that to finish work and lock up.
This is one lab and next to one of the largest hospitals in Calgary, hospital internal labs and rural/community tests continued to be run by AHS's Alberta Precision (formerly Public) Labs. Only one instance that was relatively easy was right before the Christmas holiday when the transition to private was still new.
The technicians and phlebotomists were clearly struggling to do their best to keep the patients and their own morale up while understaffed and without the resources to preserve quality of service. I do not envy any of them being thrown the privatization curveball by the UCP and ultimately the people that voted to keep them in power, worse still for people that are depending on these services.
There is an entire history of neglect and privatization of Alberta's lab services under Conservative governments. Efforts by the Albertan NDP to consolidate, update, and expand the province's public lab services were quite literally bulldozed by Jason Kenney. Through the pandemic and now under Danielle Smith, the UCP has continued with plans to dismantle and portion off health care services, workers, and the facilities and now buying back our own labs, equipment, and employees less than a year later.
