Toronto, ON (October 3, 2019) – LifeLabs and London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) have entered into an agreement to deliver a six-month pilot service to make it easier for families with children fighting cancer to access lab testing that is required to inform treatment decisions. As of this morning, Children’s Hospital at LHSC paediatric cancer patients will be able to make appointments or drop in for blood collection at select LifeLabs patient service centres, with no out of pocket costs, as directed by their ongoing chemotherapy treatment schedules.
This new Community Collection service will greatly help those patients and families living in communities outside of London, as they will no longer need to travel as great of a distance to access the blood work that is critical to their care decisions.
With the new service, once a patient receives a LifeLabs requisition from their nurse case manager at Children’s Hospital at LHSC, their caregiver can contact the LifeLabs call centre at 1-877-849-3637 to make an appointment with the facility closest to them. Once LifeLabs completes the collection, the samples will be transported to Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (PaLM) at LHSC for testing. Based on the results, the child’s cancer care team will communicate with the patient’s family about any changes to scheduled care. This new process will reduce the number of visits to LHSC and shorten the time spent at the hospital on treatment days.
“We were thrilled to make the connection with LHSC through our community partner, the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario, and change how we support children with cancer in our local communities,” says Louise Nagy, National Director Community and Environmental Sustainability at LifeLabs. “Community is at the heart of our organization and we always aim to help improve our local communities’ access to the best health care services possible, especially when it comes to stressful medical diagnoses such as cancer. We hope that by bringing more care closer to home we add a little more comfort for families who are dealing with one of the most difficult times of their lives.”
“We are always looking for ways that we can improve the patient and family care experience at Children’s, and working together to add this service was a natural fit,” says Jackie Schleifer Taylor, President, Children’s Hospital at LHSC. “This agreement with LifeLabs will not only remove some of the additional stress that comes with a cancer care journey, it will also allow patients to access some aspects of their care closer to home where it is most convenient for them. The introduction of this pilot service serves as another great example of how LHSC is living its commitment to keeping patients at the centre of everything we do.”
For more information about the Community Collection service, visit LifeLabs’ website.
About LifeLabs
LifeLabs is Canada’s leading provider of laboratory diagnostic information and digital health connectivity systems, enabling patients and healthcare practitioners to diagnose, treat, monitor, and prevent disease. We support 20 million patient visits annually and conduct over 100 million laboratory tests through leading edge technologies and our 5,700 talented and dedicated employees. We are a committed innovator in supporting Canadians to live healthier lives, operating Canada’s first commercial genetics lab and the country’s largest online patient portal, with more than 2.3 million Canadians receiving their results online. LifeLabs is 100% Canadian owned by OMERS Infrastructure, the infrastructure investment manager of one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans. Learn more at www.lifelabs.com.
About London Health Sciences Centre
London Health Sciences Centre has been at the forefront of medicine in Canada for 144 years and offers the broadest range of specialized clinical services in Ontario. Building on the traditions of its founding hospitals to provide compassionate care in an academic teaching setting, London Health Sciences Centre is home to Children’s Hospital, University Hospital, Victoria Hospital, the Kidney Care Centre, two family medical centres, and two research institutes – Children’s Health Research Institute and Lawson Health Research Institute. As a leader in medical discovery and health research, London Health Sciences Centre has a history of over 70 international and national firsts and attracts top clinicians and researchers from around the world. As a regional referral centre, London Health Sciences Centre cares for the most medically complex patients including critically injured adults and children in southwestern Ontario and beyond. The hospital’s nearly 15,000 staff, physicians, students and volunteers provide care for more than one million patient visits a year. For more information visit www.lhsc.on.ca
About POGO
POGO champions childhood cancer care and works to ensure equitable access to and availability of state-of-the-art cancer care for all Ontario’s children. POGO’s mission is to improve the circumstances of all children who are afflicted with cancer and those of their families and caregivers. As a collaboration of care providers and stakeholders, POGO plans for provincial needs and provincial coordination, and is the official advisor to Ontario’s Ministry of Health on children’s cancer control and treatment. For more information, visit www.pogo.ca
Media Contacts
Cortney Cook, Communications Specialist
LifeLabs
T 416 675 4530 x42015
Mandy Gelinas
Communications Consultant
London Health Sciences Centre
Tel: 519.685.8500 ext. 75157