Let us know how we’re doing

(Inside Aotea, October 2010)

Welcome to our spring edition of Inside Aotea. As we come towards the end of 2010 we are keen to hear about your experiences with our services over the past year.

To make it easy for you to do that, we have set up an online survey form at www.apath.co.nz

We would really appreciate it if you could answer the questions on the survey. It will take just a couple of minutes and it will help us make our services to you even better in the future.

We think we’ve done pretty well this year but your answers will let us know the real answers — and all comments are welcomed.

We are very aware that getting your results back to your doctor quickly and accurately is very important to you, and we work hard to achieve that.

Every day, our staff process almost 10,000 tests on 3,000 patients (including taking blood samples from about 1,900 patients). Even with so many tests to process, they report 90 per cent of routine tests to doctors within 48 hours of receipt and 83 per cent of urgent tests within three hours.

We are also very aware that short waiting times when you come to see us are important.

We are also very aware that short waiting times when you come to see us are important.

Our last patient survey found that more than 70 per cent of patients wait fewer than 10 minutes and 90 per cent are attended to within 15 minutes. Those who wait more than 15 minutes have generally arrived during our peak time: 7am–11am.

How have we done this year? Has our work met your expectations? Please complete the survey and let us know.

Dr Karen Wood

Aotea Pathology, Chief Executive