A Corner Brook woman doesn't understand why the regular blood tests she's required to do every three months have become so much more complicated and time-consuming.
Hilda Butt was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2013, but beat the disease. However, she's still required to do followup blood tests once every three months.
That used to be a one-stop process, but in February when she registered at the blood lab at the Downtown Health Clinic on Herald Avenue she was told she would have to get the blood drawn across town at Western Memorial Regional Hospital.
"What used to take one hour can take you a lot longer now, doing this. It's very inconvenient, it's very stressful," she told CBC Radio's Corner Brook Morning Show.
"They said it has to be spun and frozen immediately. So therefore it can't be taken at the blood lab. It has to be taken at the hospital and frozen immediately for shipment to St. John's."
Inefficient process
Butt understands the need to have the actual test done at the hospital, but doesn't understand why Western Health can't just arrange it so that registration takes place there too.
She said people recovering from thyroid and other cancers often have a harder time getting around than other people — memory issues and brain fog make it difficult to find a parking spot outside a crowded hospital, and then navigate down to the building's basement where the testing is done.
Western Health officials told Butt she could only register at the hospital if she went through emergency, which would take much longer than even the two-stop process she faces now.
"I see no justification for it. I do know that the hospital is the place that it needs to be taken, but I think we should be able to register at the hospital," she said.
"I'd like to see that we could go into the hospital, go downstairs, go to the wicket and pass in our blood work slip and be registered there and have just one stop."
Western Health response
In a response to CBC, Western Health said it realizes it's inconvenient for patients to have to go to more than one place to get this kind of testing done.
The health authority said it is willing to review its procedures and find ways to improve the process.
"This is not isolated to the collection clinic in Corner Brook," wrote spokesperson Tara Pye. "New technologies and methodologies for testing are implemented from time to time which means that the specimen collection procedures may change."
Butt said the change also calls into question whether her blood thyroglobulin tests were being done properly all along, with such a sudden change in protocol.
"It does concern me that if all of a sudden [the blood] has to be frozen immediately, what happened in the first three years?" she said.