Community Pathology, Services for the 21st Century

Tuesday 21 March 2006

Community Pathology – Services for the 21st Century

The New Zealand Association of Pathology Practices (NZAPP) representing all community pathology practices in New Zealand today rejected the ongoing criticism of private pathology services from the union representing salaried doctors.

“Rather than worrying about the 1990s, community pathology practices are more concerned to provide services for the 21st Century”, NZAPP Chair Dr Paul Ockelford said today.

“NZAPP supports the efforts by DHBs to maintain the provision of best practice, cost-effective services to patients within an extremely tight budgetary framework.” Dr Ockelford said.

“Community pathology practices also support open, fair competition between providers of pathology services so long as patient needs are the first priority.”

“NZAPP believes that involvement of the private sector is a sensible way of using available resources wisely to get the best overall value for the patient and the taxpayer. The ‘them and us’mentality should be a thing of the past and the future is towards cooperative relationships to get maximum benefit from the resources available,” Dr Ockelford said.

“There will also be local solutions to local problems and no ‘one size fits all’ answer. As a medical community we need to think globally rather than in a partisan protective way” he concluded.

NZAPP has recognised that there is a finite limit to the funding available from the Government and is developing proposals for discussion with the Government to alleviate these problems in the future.

ENDS

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