gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
If you are willing to pay a fee there is a local private company that will now handle your laboratory requisition issued by a physician.
Ichor Blood Services previously announced doing COIVD tests for travellers and said it was in the process of getting authorization to handle regular lab work as well. That authorization is now in place.
This week the company announced that anyone with a requisition for blood and urine testing can make an appointment to have their specimens collected for a fee of about $85. Ichor delivers the specimen for processing to an accredited public laboratory and the results are provided to the ordering physician and the patient’s NetCare account.
“Ichor was originally founded with a vision to provide general lab specimen collection services, so we are pleased to finally be in a position to do so,” said CEO Mike Kuzmickas. “I started Ichor in January of 2020 after struggling to make my personal schedule line up with lab appointments and wait times. I decided to see what a private option might look like and did not find any.”
He says it took much longer than anticipated to get the required authorization in place.
Kuzmickas believes that COVID-19 “has changed the health-care delivery model forever and Ichor will continue to position itself as a reputable and high-quality option for our clients.”
Ichor and Shoppers Drug Mart provide COVID tests for people required to have this as a prerequisite for travel.
The UCP government announced in October that these tests would be offered by Dynalife, the provincial laboratory, for a fee of $150. Ichor partnered with Dynalife to collect the samples for testing in Medicine Hat.
Shoppers Drug Mart has specific conditions that must be met in order to book an appointment for a test, including details of the flight, not having any COVID symptoms and not already having been told by health authorities to get a COVID test. There are no public details of the fee. There is also no confirmation of which Shoppers Drug Mart in Medicine Hat may be offering the services. (See link below)
Ichor also provides serology tests to determine if someone has had COVID. The cost of that test is about $195. Ichor collects a blood sample and the actual serology testing is done at StageZero Life Sciences laboratory in Richmond, Va., using FDA EUA approved tests.
StageZero initially runs a BTNX Rapid Response test on the blood sample. Negative antibody results from this initial test are more than 99 per cent accurate. The results are provided to the patient through a secure online portal.
If the initial test is positive on the IgG antibody, a second test is run using the Beckman Coulter Access test. If this is positive it will validate the presence of antibodies with a Positive Predictive Value of 99 per cent.
https://www1.shoppersdrugmart.ca/en/covid19https://ichorblood.ca.
