Microbiology lab will be monitored at new home
A health committee has pledged to monitor a microbiology lab at Scunthorpe after losing the battle to keep the lab at Lincoln County Hospital.
Members of the Lincolnshire Health Scrutiny Committee argued that it jeopardised the safety of city patients to have samples taken from them tested in a lab 29-miles away.
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TESTING TIME: The microbiology lab in Scunthorpe will be closely monitored.
But Pathlinks, the organisation running the lab on behalf of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, insisted that turnaround times for test results for infections including meningitis and MRSA could only be improved.
It says the Scunthorpe lab has more modern facilities and is staffed longer hours.
In a bid to save the lab at Lincoln County Hospital the committee referred the issue to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel – experts in NHS service change.
However their final report recommended that the lab should be allowed to move.
Early results released by Pathlinks show there has been a 35 per cent reduction in the turnaround time for urgent tests, such as for meningitis, and an average of a 52.5 per cent reduction in the turnaround times when testing for the superbugs MRSA and C-difficile.
But committee member Councillor Meg Davidson accused Pathlinks of not starting the clock until a sample had reached Scunthorpe as opposed to the time it was taken from a Lincoln patient.
"The van taking the samples from Lincoln stops at GP surgeries on the way to Scunthorpe taking around three hours," said Mrs Davidson.
"This is not included in some of the turnaround times and the clock should start ticking when a sample is taken from a patient."
For more on the lab row, see Friday's Echo.
Comments
by Concerned, Lincoln
Friday, July 03 2009, 7:10AM
“The figure on C difficile cannot possibly be true. At Lincoln previously, C difficile tests were performed when the samples arrived. The test takes 25 minutes. This means that the results were reported before the samples could even reach Scunthorpe. You cannot possibly improve the turnaround time of a test that takes 25 minutes by adding a 3 hour journey to it.
Path Links were criticised by both the Health Scrutiny Committee and the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for being misleading about Turnaround times, Indeed one of the Panels recomendations is a new single system that monitors time taken for processing samples beginning at the patient and ending at result reporting. The problem is, that the people reporting this data are the people who will be criticiseed if the results are poor. Surely somebody independent should be looking at this given the previous track record.”