A focus on efficiency, accuracy and customer service

(Aotea News, August 2010)

Dr Karen Wood
Aotea Pathology
Chief Executive

Welcome to our winter edition of Aotea News. The winter season has been a busy time for us, and we have been pleased to see several new initiatives progressing well.

Good progress is being made to bring you electronic ordering of laboratory tests. I mentioned it in my previous editorial earlier this year, and since then we have worked on further developments in collaboration with our project partners and we look forward to being able to report on the pilot phase of the project by the end of the year.

We process almost 10,000 tests on 3000 patients every day (including taking blood samples from about 1900 patients). Giving you the option of ordering your tests electronically will help us improve the end-to-end process to get results back to you even more efficiently and accurately.

Currently, 90 per cent of our routine tests are reported to you within 48 hours and 83 per cent of urgent tests are reported within three hours of receipt. They’re very good numbers and we are sure that electronic ordering will mean that we are able to do even better.

We know that a quick turn-around is also important to our patients, not just with test results, but in waiting times when they come to see us.

More than 70 per cent of patients wait fewer than 10 minutes and 90 per cent are attended to within 15 minutes. When we surveyed patients, we found that those who waited more than 15 minutes — and who indicated a time of attendance — had arrived during our peak time: 7.00am–11.00am.

Please let your patients know that the secret to quicker service at Aotea Pathology is avoiding that peak period!

If you have patients in Wellington’s eastern suburbs, please note that our collection rooms moved on 2 August from Miramar to Kilbirnie.

Following the end of our lease in Miramar, we took the opportunity to move to newly renovated rooms at 68 Bay Rd, Kilbirnie. They are large, sunny, very comfortable and conveniently located in the main shopping area, near bus routes and parking.

There is no change to the medical services we provide; hours remain the same: 7.30am– 4.30pm, Monday to Friday; and the rooms have payment facilities for patients required to pay for their tests.

Payment for testing where patients are referred by specialists in private practice is set to become a thing of the past late next year. You’ll be aware that the government has made permanent its moratorium on District Health Boards charging patients for laboratory services ordered by private specialists.

This means when our current contract with the Wellington region DHBs expires on 31 October 2011, pathology tests will be provided free of charge to both public and private specialist referred patients.

Charges for patients referred by private specialists will, however, continue until which time, as specified in our existing DHB contract.

We look forward to working next year with all our private referrers to provide the same quality care at no cost to their patients, as we currently do with our publicly referred patients.