Lab scientists warn cutbacks will hit patient services

MEDICAL scientists working at public laboratories have warned that further cutbacks in healthcare funding could have a damaging effect on services to patients.

The Academy of Medical Laboratory Science yesterday expressed concern that significant investment was still needed to ensure Irish laboratories had proper accreditation to carry out testing.

Speaking at the start of a two-day BioMedica 2008 conference — organised by the academy in Dublin yesterday — president Kevin O’Connell said only 3% of Government funding for health was spent on laboratories, despite the fact that pathology tests played an important role in 70% of all clinical diagnoses.

“Significant yet critical funding is required in order to ensure that Ireland achieves and maintains an optimal standard of laboratory services required for the future,” said Mr O’Connell.

He claimed major investment was needed to ensure that a standard level of accreditation could be achieved by all laboratories providing services in the Republic.

More than 58 million tests are carried out in 46 public laboratories in Ireland each year. However, he stressed that the quality of service was not compromised without such accreditation.

“Having a recognised standard is something that patients have come to expect and is something that they deserve,” he said.

While priority had been given to funding for blood transfusion testing, Mr O’Connell said other disciplines such as haematology, immunology and virology had not been given the same resources.

Mr O’Connell complained that there was a lack of funding to arrange clinical placements for students on a recent course in molecular science organised in conjunction with a cervical cancer screening programme.

“There is a danger that these people will lose these skills and go into another discipline,” he said.

Meanwhile, Terry Casey, general secretary of the Medical Laboratory Science Association expressed concern about the growing trend by the HSE to outsource testing to private laboratories outside Ireland.

Mr Casey said recent health controversies such as the outbreak of clostridium difficile at hospitals in Ennis and Loughlinstown and cryptosporidium in water supplies in Galway as well as the ongoing prevalence of MRSA reinforced the need for world-class laboratory services in the Republic.

He warned that the increased use of foreign private labs for testing would “negatively impact upon the quality of the service for the future by redirecting badly needed funding from the public sector”.