Red Deerians will soon have a second blood test collection site.
An Alberta Health Services spokesperson stated that DynaLIFE is planning to open another patient service centre for community blood collection in Red Deer’s Bower Plaza by the end of June.
This will help reduce waits and congestion at its current site at 5002-55th Street. The second site will provide greater capacity and added convenience for community members who are needing routine lab work, added the spokesperson for AHS.
It’s also expected to reduce patient volumes at the Red Deer Regional Hospital. The hospital lab will start to focus solely on serving the acute-care lab testing needs of the hospital, and no longer on processing tests for outpatients.
Due to COVID restrictions and staffing shortages, the hospital lab is currently restricted to serving hospital clinic patients, and those who are immunocompromised or require specialized lab testing by physician referral.
On Thursday, it was announced that DynaLIFE will be providing community and non-urgent hospital lab services in communities throughout Alberta. Some of this work is now being done by Alberta Precision Laboratories. But APL will be focusing on more urgent in-hospital tests and research in the future.
Mauro Chies, interim president and CEO, Alberta Health Services, said contracting out high-volume routine lab work to DynaLIFE will allow Alberta Precision Laboratories to focus on serving the laboratory needs of acute care hospitals, with the specialized testing, research and innovation “that’s critical to the future of health care.
Chies mentioned an APL focus on specialized areas, such as genetics and genomics, transfusion and transplantation medicine, molecular pathology and public health testing and surveillance.”
No jobs will be lost as a result of the change, expected to happen before the end of 2022. But some APL workers will be offered the chance to transition to similar jobs at DynaLIFE, said Alberta Health Minster Jason Copping.
The minister added, “Partnering with DynaLIFE is an innovative solution that will advance laboratory medicine over the long term and build on the success of our current lab system.”
DynaLIFE will be upgrading and expanding patient service centres in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Fort McMurray, Leduc, Okotoks, Strathmore and Cochrane. It will also be making improvements to its Calgary and Edmonton hub lab testing facilities.
Jason Pincock, president and CEO of DynaLIFE Medical Labs, said Red Deer is getting the first new expansion clinic in the province.
“We look forward to working with Alberta Health Services and Alberta Precision Laboratories on completing much-needed upgrades and expansion,” he added.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter