Sun, 13 Sep 2009 5:48p.m.
By Jane Luscombe
Auckland's embattled new medical testing company has been delivered an embarrassing punishment for a shaky start to its services.
Health bosses have taken over control of the quality and safety of the service, and is sending its own team into Labtests.
A grim-faced Pat Sneddon of the Auckland District Health Board was not mincing his words over the way the new $560 million service from Labtests has stumbled through its first few weeks.
"We are taking direct intervention. We are taking over quality and control aspects of this. We are including a new team into the Labtests processes of tomorrow."
The team of six will be directly responsible for stopping the problems that began almost as soon as Labtests took over medical testing from Diagnostic Medlab five weeks ago.
Bosses from Labtests' parent company, Healthscope, flew in from Australia today for an urgent meeting to hear the bad news.
"I would think the planning here was not what it should have been, but that's 20/20 vision and we are going to fix it," says Mr Sneddon.
The world's pathology community is reported to be watching closely to see if they can.
No one has attempted such an ambitious change before - an established and successful company being replaced by a new rival that has had to start from scratch.
Labtests won the contract after promising savings of $15 million a year. It has now got to come up with the money itself to pay for the team of health board executives.
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