By News Reporters
A private laboratory in Whitfield Street, Fitzrovia, is about to take control of the pathology service overseeing blood tests at the Royal Free and University College London hospitals, reports Tom Foot in this week’s Camden New Journal.
The Doctors Laboratory who are also founder members of The Fitzrovia Partnership Business Improvement Disctrict (BID) “will be a major shareholder in a ‘joint venture’ being set up with the hospitals”. The Doctors Laboratory is owned by Australian company Sonic Healthcare Ltd.
It will employ 690 staff currently working for the NHS, says the CNJ, a move has been criticised for privatising a huge chunk of the NHS in Camden with NHS staff being given little choice but to transfer to the private sector.
A 90-day consultation survey has been launched on changes that critics have said represent a dramatic escalation of the privatisation of the NHS in Camden.
A senior Royal Free source said staff were being offered the choice of transferring or resignation. “Simply selling off the service and loyal NHS scientists is a lazy and shortsighted approach,” he added.
Read the full story in the Camden New Journal.
“The Doctors Laboratory”?
Well: it’s not a laboratory owed by a particular – unnamed – doctor; neither is it a laboratory owned by a group of doctors. Otherwise we would have seen an apostrophe in the name.
“The Doctors Laboratory”? I’d rather not – whilst laid out on the stretcher – have my life in the hands of a firm that can’t even give itself a literate name.
I’m an apostrophe geek but I have no idea how to take blood, or analyse and interpret a blood sample. I’m happy to correct other people’s apostrophes knowing that organisations like The Doctors Laboratory do what they do best. Which, presumably, is to help doctors diagnose symptoms and treat their patients.