Posted by 
Workers from Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL) are being called on to help offer more community lab appointments, the province said Thursday, in a move that comes eight months after the company handed over lab services to Dynalife.
Since the private company took over in early December, there have been reports of weeks-long wait times for appointments for things like blood tests, with the issue particularly pronounced in the Calgary area.
Now, workers with APL — which is part of the provincial health authority Alberta Health Services (AHS) — will take on extra shifts to help ease that burden following a joint decision by Dynalife and AHS, with thousands of new appointments available by the weekend.
“Dynalife has not been meeting its targets performing as expected, and we do not want any Albertans to have to suffer as a result of that,” Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said in an interview with Postmedia.
“Today’s just another step forward towards increasing that capacity in the short term.”
LaGrange said she’d be monitoring the number of lab appointments available as well as wait times and processing times.
“I’m seeing upwards of 90 minutes of waiting even for those individual appointments. That’s unacceptable. You should be able to make an appointment and have it done timely in a timely manner.”
She called the change a temporary measure while the government looks for more long-term stability.
“Nothing is off the table in terms of getting this resolved,” she said. “We don’t want anyone disadvantaged in the meantime.”
The province said APL is taking additional action to add 7,500 more weekly appointments in the Calgary area.
Doing so involves recruiting and hiring more staff, contracting additional third-party providers, and opening a new community patient service centre in southeast Calgary.
The province said all existing appointments and lab services will continue to be provided as scheduled.
Speaking on her call-in radio show in June, Premier Danielle Smith said the province could “make other arrangements” if Dynalife continued to struggle to live up to its contract.
At the time the changeover to Dynalife was announced, then-health minister Jason Copping said the move would create “efficiencies” and save taxpayers $18 million to $36 million per year.
“This change really sums up the rationale for contracting — enhanced services at a lower cost,” Copping said. “First and foremost, it will give Albertans more and better services.”
The move was slammed by the NDP Opposition and advocacy groups like Friends of Medicare, who warned it would undermine the public health-care system and siphon dollars to for-profit companies and their shareholders.
Dynalife had already provided lab services in and around Edmonton and in much of northern and central Alberta when the UCP government — under former premier Jason Kenney — inked a deal in June 2022 to move more community and non-urgent lab work to the private company from APL.
Earlier Thursday, Health Sciences Association of Alberta president Mike Parker stated APL’s new role is proof the transition to private provider Dynalife was unnecessary.
“Since Dynalife took over community lab services, Albertans have faced unacceptable health impacts, and our members have experienced severe stress from excessive overtime due to the backlog from lack of access to laboratory services.”
Opposition health critic Luanne Metz echoes those remarks, adding the government needs to focus on finding a lasting solution.
“This is the UCP putting a bandage on the crisis they created. We are concerned that there is nothing in this plan to help fix the serious lab errors that are happening daily. More tests being done is a start but we need a plan to assure we get accurate, timely results delivered immediately to the correct physician.”
— with files from Lisa Johnson
