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By Ross Sutherland, on June 23, 2012, at 5:49 pm It seems that the government is now using changes in the OHIP fee schedule give more work to the for-profit laboratory corporations. This reduction in patient access is documented by Rita Marshall in the June 22 edition of the Mitchell Advocate. Mitchell is a town in the Municipality of West Perth near Stratford Ontario.
Don’t like the fact that Mitchell Family Doctors send patients out-of-town for blood work now? Blame the province, says the office.
“Blood work is an important diagnostic tool and we were pleased to provide that service to our patients so they did not have to leave
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: More Local Lab Service Cuts
By False Postitive: for profit medical labs, on May 7, 2012, at 8:32 am I was surprised when the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) asked me to write an analysis piece on Canada’s medical laboratories. My book, False Positive, clearly lays out my position that for-profit labs have no place in our health care system, which is at odds with the close, and profitable, relationship between the labs and many doctors. And I am a well-known critic of private health care delivery in general, a policy option that doctors have often supported.
Regardless, I was interested because an article in the CMAJ would reach a different audience than I had already
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: Medical Journal Kills For-Profit Lab Debate
By False Postitive: for profit medical labs, on February 21, 2012, at 10:18 pm Considering the 1,500 dollars a day Don Drummond was paid and the research staff at his disposal you would figure that his analysis would be more subtle and better informed.
It is not news that Don Drummond supports for-profit health care but his rationale is shockingly simplistic. The following is the key paragraph from his report supporting more private health care:
There should not be an a priori or ideological bias towards public- or private-sector service delivery. Both options should be fully tested to see which provides the best service. This should not be defined simply with respect to cost, but
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: Drummond and For-Profit Health Care
By False Postitive: for profit medical labs, on February 9, 2012, at 8:13 pm The facts as we now know them:
Despite what the hospital web site says there are no lab facilities at the Mathews Memorial Hospital or the Thessalon Hospital. Neither has a laboratory license.
Blood is taken at these facilities by hospital staff and sent to the main lab at the Sault Area Hospital for processing.
Both hospitals have been taking blood from community patients for years under these conditions.
If there is now a concern about the legality of this service there is a simple solution: the Sault Area Hospital could apply for a specimen collection center license at the
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: Update on Thessalon and St. Joseph Island
By False Postitive: for profit medical labs, on January 26, 2012, at 4:04 pm Even though I have not met the CEO of the Sault Hospital in northern Ontario I expect he is an honorable person with a difficult task: to justify the unjustifiable. It is on his orders that the Thessalon Hospital and Mathew’s Memorial Hospital, small rural hospitals, closed their doors to the local community for blood taking. Residents now have to drive 85 kilometers to a for-profit specimen collection center in Sault Ste. Marie.
A column in the Sault Star reports that the CEO said that the Laboratory Licensing Act somehow restricts hospitals from collecting specimens from community patients.
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: LHINs Undercut Integration
By False Postitive: for profit medical labs, on January 11, 2012, at 11:29 pm Residents around Thessalon and on St. Joseph Island, both east of Sault St. Marie in northern Ontario, have been recently told that their community hospitals will no longer be taking blood samples ordered by their family doctors. This follows a trend across Ontario to force all non-hospital patients to use for-profit laboratories, even if, as it is in the Algoma region, it is much more inconvenient for patients and more expensive.
The communications officer for the Sault Area Hospital, the mother ship of these two local hospitals, gave as the reason for cutting lab services that conditions of their laboratory’s
. . . → Read More: False positive: private profit in Canada’s health care: No Legal Requirement to Cut Lab Services
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