Community lab services will be going back to Alberta’s provincial labs, less than a year after Dynalife Medical Labs expanded its community lab services beyond the Edmonton region.
Friday in Red Deer, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced an agreement in principle had been signed to sell all of Dynalife’s staff, equipment, operations and property in Alberta to AHS and AHS-owned Alberta Precision Labs.
LaGrange said a final dollar number was still in negotiations with OMERS and North Carolina-based LabCorp, and final details are still being worked out.
DynaLIFE had already been provided lab services in Edmonton and several communities in the AHS North zone for more than 25 years and in January 2022, an agreement was signed for it to expand to the rest of Alberta.
In December 2022, Dynalife took over community lab services for the rest of Alberta.
Since Dynalife took over AHS contracts in Calgary and the South Zone, Albertans complained they were waiting weeks for lab appointments and results that were then used for medical decisions and treatments.
LaGrange said waiting weeks was “just not right.”
Last year, the province said approximately 65 per cent of provincial lab work — or 50 million tests per year — comes from people in the community going for testing.
While Dynalife took over community lab services in larger communities, APL continued to providing lab services inside acute care hospitals, along with smaller hospitals and community health sites that handle less than 25,000 community blood test collections per year.
— More to come…