N.B. government merging hospital lab testing with Moncton's Dumont being primary site

The New Brunswick government will merge its hospital testing laboratories into a single system with a main provincial lab at Moncton's Dr. Georges-L. Dumont University Health Centre.

Health Minister Bruce Fitch said in a news release the move was designed to head off an expected shortage of laboratory staff.

Lab networks in the two provincial health authorities, Horizon and Vitalité, "will work together as an integrated clinical laboratory system," Fitch said.

Patients will still have samples taken at their local hospitals, and some lab services will still operate at hospitals to support patient care there. But the Dumont lab will be the "primary reference lab," the release said.

The Dumont lab has been the main provincial testing lab for COVID-19 during the pandemic, and Premier Blaine Higgs has mentioned that several times as an example of the sharing of services he wants to see between Horizon and Vitalité.

Spokesperson Adam Bowie said exactly which tests will be done centrally and which will be done in local hospitals will be decided after consultations with staff. 

"Laboratory staff, as well as physicians, will be consulted as early as this fall to provide suggestions on how to design various aspects of the project," he said, adding it's still in its early stages.

The announcement of the primary lab location is later than it was supposed to be under the provincial health plan announced last November.

In that document, the Higgs government promised to designate it by the end of December 2021.

It also said the integrated system would be in place by the end of June 2023, and by December 2023 New Brunswickers would be able to schedule their own diagnostic tests, such as blood work and x-rays, at any location where the service is available.

In March the province said the Dumont hospital would house a new provincial public health lab. 

In 2019, the government issued a request for proposals from private-sector consultants on how to consolidate 20 hospital labs around the province into as few as seven.

It said 40 per cent of medical laboratory technologists working at the time would be eligible for retirement in the next five years.

The union representing lab workers said in 2020 that it would prefer consolidation to privatization but warned that merging facilities would be a temporary solution to the looming lack of staff.

"Work to modernize laboratory services started before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the last three years have shown how necessary it is to ensure these services are available when needed," Fitch said in Monday's news release.