privitisation of laboratory tests

lab tests 33

is anyone aware of the fact the irish cytology services have been outsourced to a private american company. yes we are now shipping our irish smear samples to be analysed in the USA. this is crazy but it has happened with the loss of 70 cytology jobs.

there are a further 2500 medical scientists in ireland who future is now uncertain.

the HSE and the current government have planned to build three large highly automated private laboratories to deal with all routine blood tests. this decision has already been made and is happening under our noses. they pulled the cervical screening program literally overnight. more medical scientist jobs will be lost. not to mention the future for those wishing to become medical laboratory scientists.

medical laboratory science is a 5 year degree program offered by C.I.T. (cork), G.M.I.T. (galway), and D.I.T. (Kevin street dublin). there are approx 60 graduates per year. the majority of medical scientists progress to achieve MSc qualifications. we need to use this intelligence to create highly efficient public lab systems. we are open to change but not with the loss of our jobs through privitisation.

privitisation of routine workload is going to happen. it is making a joke of the irish medical laboratory scientists. we are going to be replaced by robots and automation. we need to keep our jobs alive. even those who do decide to work in these private labs will work under minimal pay, terms and conditions will be very different. remember we are dealing with a large private american company. it is not in their best interest to look after irish staff. even if we are highly trained with BSc's and MSc's.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

A very concerned medical scientist.

Vorsprung

Source?

lab tests 33

Cervical Screening Dail Debate 29/05/2008 , loss of cytology jobs to private US company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtFZS2NqtLU

MLSA (Union of Medical Laboratory Scientists Association) AGM 25/04/2009 have stated that privitisation of routine hospital workload will happen within 18 months.
greefield sites are being sought by same private lab to build three cold laboratories. one in the south one in the east and one in the west.

Prime Mover

If automation is becoming more prevalent in the industry you will hardly avoid those effects whether you are in a public or private lab?

Regarding the privatisation, did these guys not get their foot in the door because there was a huge backlog in testing? Whos fault was that?

By farming this out, it is one less thing for the HSE to bother about. You will need to prove that we are overpaying or that the testing procedures are unsafe.

Why don't you get together and set up a competitior company and take business from other countries?

sunnyjim

That's outrageous.

Fluffybums

Do think it is ridiculous that routine cytology is sent to the US. I am absolutely staggered at how little analysis can be done in this country, not just medical for example typing of cryptosporidium has to be sent to Scotland.

That said, automation should not be feared. I used to be involved in biochemical screening in a drug discovery lab, the advent of first pipetting stations and then a robot did not reduce our workload just changed it. The machines need people to make up buffers and reagents and to load samples and because of the increased throughput there is more data to handled. Whilst the machines will repeat a procedure accurately again and again (assuming they are maintained properly) they are only as good as the person programming them - the work on the cr*p in, cr*p out basis, unlike a human the machine doesn't get the feeling that something is wrong. Skilled people are required to assess the data and interpret it and this role should not be underestimated.

Incidentally, the pipetting station was no faster than myself or my colleague but it did allow us to do two assays at the same time:D, one on the machine and one by hand.

Vorsprung

Hold on a sec, routine blood tests are already automated. So is the issue that they are being moved? Or that they are being privatised? Am I wrong in thinking that the same positions would be available in such centralised labs? Also, it would be impossible to get rid of hospital labs - if I need a test done at 3am and I need the result urgently, it wouldn't be possible to have it delivered to a central location elsewhere in Dublin.

The report you linked to is a year old, and was publicised at that stage.

lab tests 33

the HSE and Government propose to keep between 8 and 14 core or hot labs remaining on the site of larger hospitals for all the emergency tests. this will link in with the downsizing of hospitals (for example as has already happened in the northeast). this will be repeated around the country.

my point is that all routine tests in the future will be provided by a private company. some GPs already use Claymon reference lab based in sandyford. does anyone reading this have any experience of working there?
does anyone have any experience of working in laboratories in the USA or Australia where shiftwork systems are in place?

i am just trying to sound out the future for medical scientists in ireland and i thank you for your comments and expressing an interest

lab tests 33

i suppose it is happening all over the place. for example this DELL lap top came from poland.
i dont dont believe if it is as simple as transferring all medical scientist jobs to a new site, which would be exciting if the terms and conditions were ok but ive heard that the staff at this company are not treated well at all. basically i feel that we will be turned in to total monkeys altogether to be paid peanuts for doing a technically skillful job. a lot of it is automation but a lot of it is still manual plus personally ive trained for 7 years to become a medical scientist.4 years degree 2 years part time MSc.

if they could do this to radiographers too they would but only because they need the patient there and then to take xray. blood samples are transportable. and thats another thing the infrastructure just isnt in place to efficiently transport all of these tests. its just the whole thing has been dreamt up without much thought and will be planted onto us in the same way that the cytology services were taken off us.
i wish they would just put the time and effort into improving the public services that they already have. we need to keep our jobs.

Tree

All the hospitals refer specialist tests to claymon, or to other hospitals in the system

eg tralee send bff's to cuh, cuh send genetics to england, send specialist amino acid chromatography to crumlin.

No hospital lab in this country is set up for the sheer volume of possible lab tests.

RE: centralisation of non-urgent samples, i dont think this is such a bad thing provided the number of centres isnt cut to a total minimum, there is still issues w/ time involved in transporting a sample to be analysed.

The biomed science training course has been changed to a four year course in recent years following extensive research between the amls and the colleges. The lack of jobs that will affect graduates is nothing to do with automation, more the hse's poor management of frontline jobs and lack of foresight.


The outsourcing of the smears was big news last year. Sadly it takees up to three years to train a cytologist, and clearly the hse was not prepared to train the main new cytologists it would take to clear the back log. Afaik the jobs were not lost but redeployed, afaik most of the cuh staff were absorbed into various parts of the path labs, possibly even offered retraining where required.

Traumadoc

I heard the cervical smear tests are now being done overseas

Eerie

lab tests 33 wrote: »

is anyone aware of the fact the irish cytology services have been outsourced to a private american company. yes we are now shipping our irish smear samples to be analysed in the USA. this is crazy but it has happened with the loss of 70 cytology jobs.

Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't this happen nearly 2 years ago? There was quite a bit of media coverage at the time. I agree with you that it is terrible that we have lost this service but it's not really surprising, anything to save money is fair game it seems... This happened before the economy went south; if it was seen as an unnecessary expense then, it is even further down the list of priorities now.

lab tests 33 wrote: »

it is making a joke of the irish medical laboratory scientists. we are going to be replaced by robots and automation. we need to keep our jobs alive.

Such is life i'm afraid... If the technology is there, why shouldn't it be used? Every generation has it's professions that are the victims of technological advance.

lab tests 33

tralee send bff's to cuh, cuh send genetics to england, send specialist amino acid chromatography to crumlin.

what are bff's?

in theory it does make sense to create larger labs to improve productivity where you can get many test results from a single sample but it is the reality of the terms and conditions under which it will be done is what worries me. maybe i am totally wrong maybe the private system will work better than the current public system, i havent worked for a private lab

Vorsprung

If you're not sure wat the private sector is like, how can you make a comparison?

Traumadoc

Is it possible that the cytology samples sent to the US could be sent onto a third country?

Tree

bff's are b12/folate/ferritin, common enough test for iron stores and b12/folate defiency that can cause certain anaemias.


traumadoc: some stuff outsourced to a certain private lab contractor here get sent to france for even more specialist work. im unaware of the smears being sent on to a third country, but there was stuff in teh rte news a few months back about the reliablilty of this company teh hse contracted.

lab tests 33

Traumadoc wrote: »

Is it possible that the cytology samples sent to the US could be sent onto a third country?

so this is are a list of the testing facilities of the company that is now doing smears. a lot of sites in mexico
http://www.questdiagnostics.com/brand/company/b_comp_intl_facilities.html#diagnostic_testing

Traumadoc

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Vorsprung

Some tests get sent to the UK. Any problems with that?

OP where did you get the figure of 2500 medical scientists being in danger of losing their posts (mentioned in the first post)?

lab tests 33

big jim: there were 70 people employed to do the smears here in ireland. technically these people have not lost their jobs but have been retrained in other areas of the labs, but the job they were doing is now gone.

emmett stagg quoted 2500 medical scientists in danger of losing their job during that dail debate on the smear controversy last year.

i just done understand how the govt and hse can just do this? and of course its not just med labs. its the doctors and the nurses etc etc. years of training and education wasted here

Traumadoc

I think radiologists could be next, general radiology images are already being read abroad ( I heard India), this is going to be done more and more on the basis of cost. Race to the bottom, with no governance.

For example say someone misreads an Irish cervical smear that is stained in US, and were the testing has been subcontracted to a pathologist in Mexico.

lab tests 33

it will all depend on how the proposed AE closures happen although realistically both politically and logistically i cannot see how this will work out

routine testing can be batched up and sent off anywhere they dont have to bother setting up greenfield labs here on irish soil.

some tests are sent to UK but they are usually to very specific reference labs

amc156

Its also worth noting that in Ireland, prior to Quest winning the tender for cervical cancer screeing, all smears were double screened by two independant medical scientists, afaik this is not the case with quest diagnostics.

Also, word on the grapevine (and I know this may be wrong) is that the number of reports finding high grade abnormals has dropped dramatically since screening in Ireland has ceased - slightly worrying I think...

Personally, when I'm due to have a smear next I will be arranging to have it sent to a centre other than Quest and I know of many of my Medical Scientist colleagues who have already done the same. Hardly a vote of confidence in this new 'cost cutting' measure...

donna34

i'm currently a med lab student and to be honest these posts are very disheartining. . . . . what is the future will there even be jobs when I finish! without doubt this is a skilled profession and more respect should be given to us from the government. in my opinion centralisation of labs would be a disaster. . . what other options are out there for med labs if we can't get a job in the hospital labs ?? . . .
concerned student

charlieroot

Call me crazy (*dons flack jacket and helmet*), but am I the only one here who can see potential advantages to centralised labs? (A completely seperate issue to outsourcing labs abroad).

1) Centres of excellent - single/fewer locus/loci of change allowing for change more often and effecting the entire country - better equiped to stay up to date - easier to modernise.

2) Increased ability to do PCR/serology etc on rarer diseases - only a few reference labs around for some diseases - at present stuff has to be sent abroad.

3) Obviously reduced cost through elimination of redundant duplication of positions/equipment.

4) Uniform lab procedures/systems for hospitals - from what I've seen every hospital has a different / form / system. I suspect this is one of the major barriers in making electronic records work in hospitals in Ireland.

5) Better 247 365 coverage. Some labs only do certain tests during out of hours.

I don't see how centralised labs would cause mass redundancies. Relocations and some redundancies/retraining maybe. Playing the devil's advocate here - but would it be possible that the reason some lab stuff has been outsourced is inflexibility with med lab workers? Unwilling to centralise? Unwilling to change work practices?

Tree

donna34 wrote: »

i'm currently a med lab student and to be honest these posts are very disheartining. . . . . what is the future will there even be jobs when I finish! without doubt this is a skilled profession and more respect should be given to us from the government. in my opinion centralisation of labs would be a disaster. . . what other options are out there for med labs if we can't get a job in the hospital labs ?? . . .
concerned student

The AMLS has does much to get teh recognition of hte role of the med lab scientist raised in teh health services. in comparison to our colleagues in the UK we are positively revered.

As regards jobs after qualification, you dont have to work in a hospital lab in ireland, you are equally qualified to work in a hospital lab abroad, or go off into to industry, or private labs. There are all sorts of labs that would be delighted to hire a med lab graduate.




Re: Benefits to centralised labs

In certain regards there are benefits, you can carry out tests that would be carried out in larger specialised centres as your new workload would be sufficient to justify the expense of performing these tests. However, i would not imagine tests that are not currently being carried out will suddenly come into routine use in these labs, and will continue to be sent abroad.

Certain samples degrade rapidly after being taken and do need to be analysed as soon as possible. Sending samples on extended trips cross country may result in abberant results, or perhaps the test just nto being performed on the sample. Also, the extended transport increases the chances of samples being lost or delayed. There does need to be emergency cover at all major hospitals to perform a number of tests immediately. Also, there are routine clinics where some patients have to wait for results so their medication can be changed on the day w/o having to send them home and get them to come back in again for a new script.

1penny1

Trust me no-one is more angry about this cytology situation than me.

The HSE funded a course which began just a few years ago in dit, especially aimed at training people to deal with the implementation of the national cervical screening programme. This is a one and a half year add on degree specifically aimed at gynae cytology. The year that i started this course with a class if 13 we were told that the HSE had spent easily 100,000 euro on our two new labs with micros and a 14 eyepiece multiheader. i was very excited about starting out on my new career.

Having completed a year of this course and now studying for my final exams in the library, we heard that the countrys cytologists were being redeployed and all the cytology labs were closing. This not only meant we couldnt become cytologists but we couldn't do our 6 month placement which we had been promised, which meant we couldnt become a member of the AMLS. Which means i now have a completely useless degree!, which i might add cost me a lot of money to do.!! :mad:

It is a crime that the specialised skill of cytology will die in this country. We will never be able to manage our own screening programme now without labs or skilled people. And the HSE were pumping money into training people right up until september 2007 - just 7 months before they handed the contract to quest.