Public Works! So long, Serco P3 information scheme hits hospital hard NS school buses stay where they belong Winnipeg city council wades out of contracting out High priced consultants fail to deliver Private care ‘a dumping ground’ for people with disabilities Library privatization doesn’t check out Private savings a pipe dream in Calgary Ambulance privatization far from a done deal Public works for green jobs Victoria: Private lab talks must stop Private labs fail test Secrecy surrounds private clinics Ontario: Making services disappear for people Thumbs up, thumbs down...Private labs fail test
Private laboratory testing is big business for lab corporations such as MDS and Dynacare. These private companies take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the public health system, yet they fail the test when it comes to public accountability.
Substandard labs can create havoc in a patient’s life. In one highly publicized incident this year, an Ontario woman was told her breast cancer had recurred. She underwent surgery for the third time only to discover six days later the lab had made a mistake.
The woman, children’s singer Sharon Hampson, discovered her tissue sample had been contaminated with another patient’s cancer cells, probably stuck to an improperly cleaned pair of forceps. The test was done at the P3 Sunnybrook-Dynacare lab in Toronto.
"Basically I’ve been to hell and back in this process," Hampson told the Toronto Star. "I know they cannot give me back my lymph nodes. But this isn’t about me. It’s about this whole lab system. This is about saving money and bottom lines," she added.
"Something as fundamental as cleaning your tools should not be where the problem lies."
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