On May 28th, the province announced that they are partnering with the private, for-profit company Dynacare to open a new lab in the Interlake-Eastern Health Sciences building.
Manitobans in the region deserve access to health care close to home, including diagnostic services. At the Manitoba Health Coalition, we fully support the expansion of diagnostic and laboratory testing facilities in the region. However, we oppose pursuing this expansion through increased reliance on private, for-profit companies like Dynacare.
The real solution is more public access, not further privatization.
Private, for-profit companies only operate in rural settings when there is public money to support them. Without those public dollars, it is not attractive or profitable enough for them to go outside major centres. Even with public backing, Dynacare has a history of closing its labs and consolidating services.
The profitability of Dynacare’s model also relies on paying their workers less than they make for equivalent work in the public system.
Partnering with private, for-profit companies is neither a safe bet for patients nor an efficient way to fund our public health care system.
Other provinces have learned their lesson about relying on private companies to run their lab and diagnostic systems. In Alberta, they tried to fully privatize their community labs. This experiment in privatization was a disaster that wasted more than $100M public dollars. Labs in Alberta are now fully public.
It is especially disappointing to see the expansion of private labs in Manitoba under an NDP government which was previously critical of the practice, all while a conservative government in Alberta has overseen the creation of a fully public lab system.
Bringing health care closer to home can be done through the public system. Doing so takes funding, and requires political will. Suggesting a private company like Dynacare is simply too established to cut ties with, as this government did when signing a new five year agreement with them last May, is a failure of leadership and long term vision. A truly secure, equitable and reliably accessible health care system must be fully public.