Media Statement For Immediate Release,
Thursday19 October 2006
“Whanganui DHB Bungles Laboratory Decision”
“The Whanganui District Health Board has bungled its provisional decision to privatise its hospital laboratory,” said Mr
Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. Mr Powell was responding to
the decision that Central Medlab was its “first preferred proposal” for both community (GP referrals) and hospital (more
complex internal hospital referrals) laboratories.
“This is a backdoor method of putting a core hospital service under private management whose main objective and reason
for being is to extract profits out of the service. The hospital laboratory is arguably the most integrated core
service. Hospital laboratories affect around 60-70% of clinical decisions but are only around 5% of total hospital
costs.”
“We have serious concerns over the DHB’s seriously deficient selection process. This includes the marginalisation of
senior doctors’ expertise. The recommendation to the DHB was made by a group dominated by managers without experience in
running laboratories and without objective clinical advice.”
“The DHB’s decision fails to comply with a new government protocol which requires that it actively and constructively
engages with the health professionals involved in the provision of the service and to explore with them other means of
achieving the DHB’s objective. But the advice of health professionals in the hospital laboratory has been marginalised
and ignored.”
“We will be assertively challenging the DHB’s provisional decision because we believe it was based on unreliable and
misleading information,” concluded Mr Powell.
Ian Powell
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
ENDS