Union doctors demand Allina fix issues after lab work is outsourced

Problems continue with the shift of lab services at Allina Health, union doctors say, with caregivers cautioning that delayed test results and reduced services are raising costs and slowing access to care.

On Friday, union members at the Doctors Council SEIU issued a public call for action from the board of directors at Allina Health, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that sold its outpatient lab business to New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics in a Sept. 16 deal.

Earlier this week, a union leader told the Minnesota Star Tribune the shift of outpatient lab work thus far had been “a disastrous, chaotic mess” that raised safety concerns.

“This change has compromised our ability as providers to deliver high quality care to our patients and their families,” Britta Kasmarik, an Allina Health nurse practitioner in Bloomington and member of Doctors Council SEIU, said in a Friday news release.

Kasmarik added, “this change has prevented providers from being able to order labs that are pertinent to appropriately evaluating and treating our patients” and has “resulted in providers having no other choice but to send patients to [urgent care] or emergency rooms, which subjects them to higher health care bills and longer wait times.”

Union leaders said Friday the problems reflect a new reality for patients and workers that goes beyond issues with rollout logistics. Allina disputed this assertion and said the health system is two weeks into a complex transition where Allina and Quest are actively working to stabilize lab services.

In a statement, Allina called patient safety its “first priority.”

“We are implementing all operational options and clinical solutions to ensure we can meet the needs of our patients and care teams as soon as possible,” the health system said. “We are seeing daily improvements and are committed to restoring service levels to the standard our patients expect and deserve.”

In a statement, Quest Diagnostics said it is committed to delivering high quality service.

“The Allina Health-Quest lab transition is highly complex, and we’ve experienced extended wait times and other service issues, which the Quest and Allina Health teams are rapidly addressing,” the company said in a statement. “We are making daily improvements and exploring additional options to ensure we deliver the quality services patients rightly expect of us.”

This summer, Allina announced the deal to outsource outpatient lab work to Quest as the health system has been turning the corner on recent financial challenges. The health system continues to handle lab work for hospital patients.

To union leaders, the Allina deal with Quest is part of a troubling trend in which nonprofit health care groups are acting more like for-profit companies.

With lab services, Allina leaders must develop a plan to make sure patients receive the care they deserve, said Dr. Cora Walsh, a family medicine physician who works for Allina in West St. Paul. This plan, Walsh said, needs to ensure that Quest provides timely results for clinical decision making.

“We no longer have on site some of the critical point of care testing we relied on previously,” Walsh said in the news release. “We need restoration of immediate lab results ... for timely assessment of certain acute medical issues. We need assurance that patients will not bear an increased cost of care for these services.”