Roy Heather: General Debate 
Roy Heather: General Debate 
[Volume:633;Page:4989] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 Community laboratory services have hit the headlines in many areas of New Zealand over the past 12 months. Most recently two areas have been affected in the Wellington region. Capital and Coast District Health Board and the Hutt Valley District Health Board have looked at their contracting processes and have decided they will keep the contract where it is with the community laboratory service that has provided a very good and reliable service to the people of the Hutt Valley and Wellington regions for the last 70 years. But as a result the district health boards jointly have written recently to doctors in the regions saying that as of 1 November this year patients will have to pay for any laboratory tests ordered by private specialists. This will have the bizarre effect of widening the gap for New Zealanders even further and building up an even greater barrier than currently exists between the private and public sector in health care when in fact the Government should be breaking down that barrier and looking for quality services at the best price in the best time for patients. 
The other area that has recently been affected and that has been in the news a lot in Auckland is the Auckland combined district health boards’ decision to take the contract from Diagnostic Medlab a community laboratory service that has provided community laboratory services to the people of the Auckland region for the past 70 years—and a very good quality service it has been too—and give it to Labtests Auckland which currently has no laboratory no staff and no equipment. Yet apparently it will be up and running on 1 July 2007 ready to provide what it claims will be an equivalent service to that currently provided to the good people of Auckland. The main reason this has happened is that the district health boards claim there will be a $15 million saving but there is a bit of misleading information in that figure. The truth of the matter is that there would be a $15 million saving on what is spent this year but Diagnostic Medlab has contracted to undercut its current budget so the actual saving to the board by awarding the contract to Labtests Auckland would be a saving of $8 million. 
There are several other worrying points with regard to the contract. Many of those who need these services are elderly and do not have the capacity to travel as much as younger members of the population. Collection points will be halved so in effect that will put extra pressure on general practitioners who are already burdened to take blood samples. The Government just this week announced an extra $43 million to help struggling primary health organisations keep their heads above water but it is happy for even more work to be imposed on those same organisations. That is hardly fair I would have thought. 
The people of Auckland are very worried. They are so worried that 70000 have signed a petition saying they do not want the service to change. That is 70000 signatures. Anybody who has tried to collect signatures for a petition will know exactly how difficult that is. That is 10000 more signatures than Annette King the previous Minister of Health and Helen Clark managed to collect to save PlunketLine when they were in Opposition in 1998. It is interesting how things change. Suddenly now they are in Government PlunketLine is no longer needed or relevant. It seems that parents of preschool children should be consulted only when Labour is in Opposition. 
The staff of Diagnostic Medlab say they are not going anywhere. Labtests Auckland seems to think it will pick up all the staff as well as the building. That is not the case; the staff say they will not work for Labtests Auckland. Many of the pathologists say that rather than work for Labtests Auckland they will leave the country which would create even more difficulty in relation to the huge current shortage of pathologists in New Zealand. 
Medical staff in the Auckland region are also very concerned. I have been contacted personally by many doctors general practitioners hospital specialists and nurses who work in the area. They are very worried. They are the experts in this area and I would think that the district health boards and the Minister of Health should be very worried that they are voicing their concerns very loudly. 
The Minister cannot continue to ignore all of these worries. They are valid. What he needs to take an interest in too is the process. Was it fair? There has been a great deal of questioning around the involvement of the chief executive of Labtests Auckland who I think although he says he absented himself from discussions did have a conflict of interest when he was on the Auckland District Health Board and was asked for opinions on where the contract should go and what services should be provided.