The Canadian company DynaLIFE Medical Labs will take over the non-emergency laboratory services in Alberta this winter in a move that the province says will lead to significant cost savings.
The provincial government announced this on Thursday, saying a new service agreement between Alberta Health Services (AHS) DynaLIFE and Alberta Precision Laboratories will take effect on December 5th.
The change will allow DynaLIFE to manage patient centers and mobile collection facilities in urban and large rural communities, including Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Fort McMurray, Fort Saskatchewan, Grand Prairie, Brooks, Brooks , Camrose, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Strathmore, Leduc, Sherwood Park, Spruce Grove and St. Albert.
DynaLIFE will also upgrade and expand its patient care centers in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deere, Lethbridge, Fort McMurray, Leduc, Ocotox, Stratmore and Cochrane.
Alberta Precision Laboratories, a subsidiary of AHS, will continue to provide laboratory services in small rural and remote communities, manage laboratories in emergency hospitals, and offer specialized provincial testing.
“Negotiating a large community and unhurried, routine hospital laboratory work will allow Alberta Precision Laboratories to focus on serving the laboratory needs of our emergency hospitals, along with specialized testing, research and innovation that are critical to the future of health care in areas such as genetics and genomics, transfusion and transplant medicine, molecular pathology, and public health testing and monitoring, ”said Mauro Chies, interim president and CEO of AHS.
Alberta’s health minister, Jason Kopping, says the change will save the province somewhere between $ 18 million and $ 36 million a year, which could be reinvested in the health care system.
“The partnership with DynaLIFE is an innovative solution that will improve laboratory medicine in the long run and build on the success of our current laboratory system, which is recognized as one of the best in North America,” he said. “This agreement expands Albert’s capacity and saves money while providing existing jobs to all our lab workers.”
In response to the announcement, NDP health critic David Shepard said Alberta residents would have more testing capacity “if the UCP focuses on strengthening and investing in our public health system.”
“Instead, they continue to undermine it by redirecting public dollars to profitable companies and their shareholders,” he said.
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