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. This connection was initiated through our community partner, the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario (POGO), and changes how we support children with cancer in our local communities.
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.
Through community partnerships with great organizations like POGO and the Children’s Hospital at LHSC, we are improving healthcare experiences and outcomes for kids with cancer and their families across Western Ontario.
