Public Medical Labs Could Save Canada $250 Million A Year: Study

The Canadian health care system could save a quarter of its billion-dollar annual spending on lab tests if for-profit labs no longer did them, a new study suggests.

In an article published in Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, Ross Sutherland -- a registered nurse and the Chair of the Ontario Health Coalition -- says public health care systems pay for-profit corporations to deliver medical laboratory services. The transparency of those services is unclear, Sutherland says, because the corporations can invoke "confidential business information" to avoid disclosing just what they do and how much it is costs.

Nevertheless, Sutherland says available data point to excessive private-lab costs...