LifeLabs has commenced steps to close Sudbury’s regional laboratory this spring, and the office of Health Minister Sylvia Jones confirmed the province is doing nothing to stop it
With LifeLabs’ regional laboratory in Sudbury slated to close this spring, Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas said the company has already started easing toward the closure.
Through a whistleblower, she heard the company planned to begin sending certain tests to a laboratory in Barrie this week.
This revelation caused laughter at the office of Sudbury NDP MPP Jamie West during a media conference on March 19, in light of this week’s snowstorm closing highways and the airport.
“I don’t know how well that went,” Gélinas said, who also serves as the Official Opposition’s health critic.
During the media conference, Gélinas urged the province to use their power as the contract owner to mandate LifeLabs to keep their regional laboratory in Sudbury open.
West also argued that if the province can pull their contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, they can also pull their contract with U.S.-based LifeLabs.
“Right now is a decisive moment,” Gélinas said, adding that Health Minister Sylvia Jones “needs to act quickly to ensure Northerners have equitable access.”
Jones’ press secretary, Ema Popovic, told Sudbury.com following the media event at West’s office that the province is not doing anything about the laboratory’s closure, which at the latest update was expected to be finalized sometime this spring.
Sudbury.com first reported on the impending closure in January, at which time it was noted that while LifeLabs’ collection centres would remain open, they’re closing their regional laboratory in Sudbury and putting approximately 40 medical professionals out of work.
On March 19, West said that LifeLabs has since made a “vague commitment” to keep one or two local employees on board, but “our sense was that they would be employees that can be quietly laid off in the future.”
With the local laboratory’s closure, medical tests currently collected locally will soon be tested in southern Ontario.
Patient advocate Stacy King speaks about how important timely medical test results are to her father, Richard, during a media conference at Nickel Belt NDP MPP Jamie West’s office on March 19. Tyler Clarke / Sudbury.com
Although LifeLabs and Health Minister Sylvia Jones have both said the local laboratory’s closure will not affect local service levels, this point has been refuted.
During a pre-budget public meeting in Sudbury earlier this year, Medical Laboratory Professionals Association of Ontario representative Jessie Clelland told provincial officials the closure will be “detrimental to this community.”
This point was reiterated during the March 19 media event at West’s office, at which the MPP described the laboratory’s closure as the No. 1 concern residents have raised since he was first elected to office in 2018.
“We are right on the end of digging out from a winter storm that paralyzed our highways for two days,” West told local journalists. “We know it’s not uncommon to have highway closures across the North on a regular basis, so a lot of people are very concerned about what’s going on.”
During the media event, area resident Stacy King said her father, Richard, requires regular blood work due to his cancer. On a recent Wednesday morning, he went to LifeLabs for testing at the request of his doctor. The results came in that afternoon, and his doctor said he needed to get a blood transfusion immediately.
“Dad’s hemoglobin had fallen to critical levels and we had to get him to the hospital as quickly as possible,” King said.
“Thank goodness we got the results back swiftly from LifeLabs, because even though I rushed over and took dad to the ER, it was a further 10-hour wait until we could start the blood transfusion.”
Fast results, King said, “can literally mean life or death.”
Retired lab technician Jan O’Leary, who worked in the local hospital system for 30 years before retiring 17 years ago, said there’s a short window for non-frozen samples to get tested, which is in some cases 24 hours.
“Sample integrity is diminished and in some cases may be irretrievable,” she said, adding that in cases where tests are taken prior to starting certain medications or antibiotics, they cannot be repeated in the event they’re held up in traffic on their way to a southern Ontario laboratory.
Retired technologist Jan O’Leary speaks during a media conference at Sudbury NDP MPP Jamie West’s office on March 19. To the left is Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas and to the right is West and patient advocate Stacy King. Tyler Clarke / Sudbury.com
LifeLabs’ impending closure was announced to staff late last year, prompting immediate criticism from both Gélinas and West in Queen’s Park.
This was followed by Mayor Paul Lefebvre urging the province to keep the laboratory open, Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt Conservative MP Jim Bélanger reiterating this message, Liberal MP Viviane Lapointe expressing concern to federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel, and city council unanimously voting to push the province to take “immediate action” on the closure.
Sudbury.com sent an inquiry to Health Minister Sylvia Jones press secretary Ema Popovic on March 19 asking, “Has the Ministry of Health done anything to prevent this closure, or does the ministry plan on doing anything to prevent the laboratory’s closure?” alongside requesting a phone interview.
Popovic responded with a written statement instead of granting an interview, which is the consistent approach among ministry staff under the Ford government.
In Popovic’s statement, the answer to Sudbury.com’s question was ultimately no.
“LifeLabs, not the Ministry of Health, is responsible for their own service delivery and operations,” Popovic wrote. “We are not involved in those decisions, however, we have been assured that there will be no impact to service delivery.”
LifeLabs is privately owned by U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics, which made the decision to close the Sudbury laboratory.
Although there was more to the statement Popovic provided, it didn’t directly relate to the impending closure of LifeLabs’ regional laboratory in Sudbury.
“We are adding 700 more educational seats for healthcare professionals in Ontario’s colleges and universities, including medical laboratory technologists,” the statement read.
“We have expanded the Learn and Stay Grant, which covers the tuition and educational expenses for students in a healthcare program in exchange for a term of work in their area of study, to include medical laboratory technologists. Nearly 3,800 learners have already received funding through the grant to help pay for their post-secondary education.
“We have also expanded six new collection sites to make it more convenient for northern and rural communities to get lab tests closer to home.
“Our government has also established ‘As of Right’ rules for health care professionals, including lab technologists, which allows professionals registered in other jurisdictions to begin to practice in Ontario immediately, helping increase access to care across Ontario, including in rural and northern communities.”
West also brought up the Learn and Stay Grant during the May 19 media event, at which he argued the closure of Sudbury’s regional LifeLabs laboratory will slash work opportunities in the region by approximately 40 positions and push technologists to southern Ontario.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.