New community lab collections location selected

Site will offer more privacy, easy access, longer hours when it opens in March

BROOKS — Starting next March, area residents will have a new location to provide blood and other samples for laboratory testing.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) will open the collections site at Bay #7, 500 Cassils Rd. E.

The site — part of the expansion of lab services in southeast Alberta — is located close to the Brooks Health Centre and will have increased privacy for patients, easy access for people with mobility challenges and ample parking.

“We used the feedback from lab patients to help guide the operations of the new collection site,” says Dorothy Ward, South Zone Lab Services Director. “The new site will be open Monday to Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., an hour later than the current collection site. The new space will also have private patient rooms for collection procedures.”

The Government of Alberta’s Infrastructure Maintenance Program will spend $650,000 to turn the bay into a modern and efficient lab collections space, which AHS will lease.

Patients will continue to have their lab collections taken at the Newell Clinic and Brooks Health Centre until the new collection site opens in March 2017.

About 170 to 200 patients per day have lab samples collected in Brooks.

Alberta Health Services is the provincial health authority responsible for planning and delivering health supports and services for more than four million adults and children living in Alberta. Its mission is to provide a patient-focused, quality health system that is accessible and sustainable for all Albertans. Site will offer more privacy, easy access, longer hours when it opens in March

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