On Thursday, June 2, Alberta's Minister of Health Jason Copping announced that the Alberta Health Services (AHS) contract with DynaLife to provide the majority of laboratory services in the province has been finalized.
Starting Dec. 5, all community and non-urgent hospital lab services will be provided by DynaLife.
In an email to The Gazette, Stacey Martz, the executive assistant to DynaLife's CEO Jason Pincock, said that as a result of the contract, DynaLife will be opening a second location in St. Albert.
"The location has been selected and will be located at Tudor Glen Market," Martz wrote. She added that the new location will be open by the end of the year.
Martz didn't say how much testing capacity the new location will have.
During the press conference on June 2, Copping said the province's contract with DynaLife will "create efficiencies and cost-savings between $18 million to $36 million a year.”
"We need every single dollar we can find,” Copping said. “Every dollar we save will stay in the system to do more services for Albertans.”
After December 5, Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL) - the subsidiary of AHS currently responsible for the majority of lab services in Alberta - will continue to provide services in rural and remote communities as well as acute care hospitals.
At the June 2 press conference, interim president and CEO of AHS Mauro Chies said, "having DynaLife take on more high-volume routine lab work from community service centres and our hospital labs will allow APL to enhance its' focus on serving the needs of our acute care hospitals, along with specialized testing, research, and innovation."
Having APL service acute care hospitals and research is "critical to the future of our healthcare system,” Chies said.
“An important part of the agreement is that it will see DynaLife expand and build new patient service centres in many of our largest and fastest growing communities in Alberta, and implement a single province-wide appointment booking system.”
At the press conference, DynaLife CEO Jason Pincock said, "this partnership between the public and private sector can only be possible here in Alberta.”
“All healthcare has challenges going forward around sustainability," Pincock said. "It’s partnerships like this and the innovation that Alberta can drive that puts Alberta out front.”
Pincock and Copping confirmed that APL unionized staff who will work for DynaLife come December will have their collective agreements carried forward. Copping stated that successor rights under the Canada Labour Code apply to APL unionized staff who will soon be employed by DynaLife.
APL and AHS did not respond to interview requests from The Gazette.
Privatization displeasure
The non-profit organization Friends of Medicare, which formed in 1979 and has advocated for public healthcare ever since, has been outspoken against AHS's contract with DynaLife since the government first announced it in January of this year.
In response to Copping's announcement on June 2, Friends of Medicare posted a statement to their website reiterating their disapproval of the DynaLife contract.
"As Albertans have seen time and again, short-sighted privatization experiments with our health care compromise transparency and accountability, and far too often come at the expense of working conditions and quality of care," the statement reads.
The executive director of Friends of Medicare, Chris Gallaway, is quoted in the statement as saying, “this government has continuously demonstrated that they will always prioritize profits over patients, and today’s non-announcement was no different.”
