“As you know, in August 2024, Quest completed its acquisition of LifeLabs. Since then, Quest — an American multinational — has been attempting to cut back services to Ontario’s patients. In Sudbury, they attempted to close their laboratory processing facility entirely and have now reduced its staffing by half. From January to March, they cancelled afternoon hours at the Kenora lab collection centre. Currently, they are beginning to move lab tests that are done in Ontario’s hospitals to the United States.”

Mehra and Sutherland wrote that for decades, reference lab tests have been performed in hospitals around the province.

“Shifting them to the United States raises serious patient privacy and specimen quality concerns; delays results; harms the efficiency and independence of Ontario’s medical laboratory system; transfers more Ontario health care dollars to the United States; and reduces income to our hospitals,” they argued.

“On March 9, LifeLabs/Quest informed external laboratories that reference laboratory tests will be transitioned to Quest Diagnostics. What they call external laboratories are Ontario’s public hospital medical laboratories, which have been routinely used for many years by LifeLabs to test samples from Ontario patients that LifeLabs did not have the ability to process.”

All of the Quest reference labs are located in the United States. The transfer of tests was to begin in April, with phases two and three rolling out through July.

LifeLabs, which still collects samples in Sudbury, has said the moves are being made to save money and insists that having them analyzed elsewhere will not affect services to patients.

Jones’ office, meanwhile, has said it will not interfere in LifeLabs’ decisions.

However, the Ontario Health Coalition argues Quest’s actions will reduce the protection of medical data; drain financial resources from hospitals; send more Ontario tax dollars to the USA; erode the efficiency of the provincial lab processing system by removing needed volume; and jeopardize sample quality by increasing transportation and turnaround time, and by making it harder for patients in hospitals to access reference tests.

“In our view, these actions by Quest demonstrate a lack of concern about delivering high-quality medical laboratory services in Ontario. Maximizing corporate income by bleeding income from Ontario’s health care system and patients should not be the driving force of our medical laboratory system,” Mehra and Sutherland wrote. “Quest’s contract to provide outpatient medical laboratory services in Ontario must be cancelled as soon as possible, and your government must restore all outpatient lab testing to the control of local public hospitals.

“Transferring the community laboratory work to the hospitals will make a more integrated health system and ensure public — and Canadian domestic — control over these vital services. It will be cheaper, provide better quality and faster care, strengthen the services within local hospitals and increase accessibility for patients to needed health services.”

Mehra and Sutherland are also asking Jones to make public all contracts between the Ontario government and Quest/LifeLabs.

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