Patients suffer because of Dynacare’s biopsy-processing delays: Winkler MD

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/03/2024 (559 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A longtime Winkler physician is raising concerns about weeks-long delays in diagnosing cancer patients because of long processing times for biopsies.

It usually takes four weeks, and sometimes up to six weeks, for Dr. Chandy Jacob to get the results back after he takes a biopsy and submits a pathology report from the C.W. Wiebe Medical Centre clinic to Dynacare, the general surgeon said.

It took 51 days last year to get the results of a biopsy that showed one of his patients had melanoma and needed further surgery, Jacob said. Without revealing any personal health information, Jacob provided his log of dates for eight recent cases between last May and this month.

He recorded the dates he sent off the biopsy specimen to Dynacare for testing, the dates the pathology lab completed the report and the dates he received the results in the mail. In all of those cases, the patients were diagnosed with cancer. Except for one that had a three-week turnaround time, the patients all waited longer than a month to get their diagnoses.

Dynacare, a private medical lab company based in Ontario, is contracted to process some of Manitoba’s pathology specimens.

Dynacare’s average turnaround time to process pathology test results is two to three weeks for tests collected at its community labs in Winkler and Morden. Dynacare is contracted to complete pathology tests that come from community-based locations, including physician clinics.

Jacob said he’s noticed delays for years, but they’re getting worse.

“It’s for years, actually, but it’s getting worse, and it’s getting to my nerves,” he said.

He said patients with fast-spreading cancers such as melanoma need to know right away so they can start treatment. Although he didn’t disclose personal details, Jacob said the current processing times are affecting patients.

“That’s clear. If you come in with cancer, I can’t diagnose it for four weeks, then how can I treat them? So the patient suffers,” he said.

Over the years, Jacob has been advocating for greater access to health care in rural Manitoba. He said he’d like to see a pathology lab set up in the Winkler-Morden area and more support for rural patients. When he was a resident in pathology in Winnipeg, he said results for these kinds of reports were processed within two days.

Dynacare spokesperson Mark Bernhardt wrote in an email Thursday the company would be happy to review each of these cases with Dr. Jacob. He said turnaround times vary because each patient and diagnosis is different. Some of the samples take more work, such as additional staining, consults or a process known as immunohistochemistry, which creates more delays.

In a statement, he said the processing time for pathology test results depends on the collection location. The tests are typically processed at Dynacare’s Winnipeg lab, but will be sent to Brampton, Ont. in some cases, he said. The volume of tests has remained stable recently.

The health minister’s office acknowledged waiting for test results is very stressful for families.

“We have reached out to health system leaders to determine why results are taking longer for this physician and their patients and what can be done to expedite the process,” reads the statement from the office of Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

“Our government is committed to ensuring that Manitobans have timely and reliable test results no matter where they live in the province.”

The processing time is typically 17 days for pathology test results coming from hospitals or other facilities in the Southern-Health-Sante-Sud region that are fulfilled in Shared Health diagnostic labs in Winnipeg or Brandon, the provincial health authority said.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca