A new pathology laboratory has been officially opened at Nepean Hospital by the NSW Health Minister, the Hon. Ryan Park MP. The new lab is part of the hospital’s $1 billion redevelopment.

Min­is­ter Park joined health work­ers in a tour of the new lab­o­ra­to­ry just ahead of the offi­cial open­ing on Tues­day 8 August.

The pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry has dou­bled in size and fea­tures new equip­ment, recep­tion area and staff amenities.

Our Nepean lab­o­ra­to­ry is one of the first to ben­e­fit from NSW Health Pathology’s $29 mil­lion invest­ment to upgrade chem­i­cal analyser equip­ment in 27 labs across West­ern Syd­ney and region­al NSW.

Invest­ing in the lat­est automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy will fur­ther improve effi­cien­cies in the move­ment and pro­cess­ing of sam­ples in larg­er lab­o­ra­to­ries, like Nepean.

Staff work­ing in our lab­o­ra­to­ries are crit­i­cal to most aspects of clin­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing in a hos­pi­tal, and ensur­ing they have state-of-art equip­ment and infra­struc­ture is cen­tral to the effi­cient pro­vi­sion of clin­i­cal services.

The expand­ed pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry and new equip­ment will improve the way staff work in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and car­ry out pathol­o­gy test­ing, which are cru­cial tools in detect­ing, diag­nos­ing and treat­ing dis­ease, as well as an impor­tant aspect of man­ag­ing long-term med­ical conditions.

NSW Health Pathology’s Act­ing Chief Exec­u­tive, Pro­fes­sor Rob Lin­de­man, said the tran­si­tion from the old lab to the new facil­i­ty has been a team effort.

“Staff have worked extreme­ly hard to reach this point,” he said.

Prof Lin­de­man said the lab­o­ra­to­ry will bring enor­mous ben­e­fits to the com­mu­ni­ties of Pen­rith and Blue Mountains.

“Not only does this new lab pro­vide impor­tant pathol­o­gy ser­vices to local areas, but it is also a great exam­ple of col­lab­o­ra­tion with our col­leagues at Nepean Blue Moun­tains LHD.

“It’s also ide­al­ly posi­tioned next to the emer­gency depart­ment, mater­ni­ty ward and the­atres – enhanc­ing clin­i­cal inter­ac­tions for staff and our patients, and will allow us to pro­vide rapid turn­around times for ser­vices to these crit­i­cal parts of the hos­pi­tal campus.

“The con­tem­po­rary con­fig­u­ra­tion cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for automa­tion and stream­lin­ing of test­ing, and for inter­ac­tion between spe­cial­ties that are increas­ing­ly rely­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar tech­nolo­gies,” said Prof Lindeman.

The Nepean lab­o­ra­to­ry oper­ates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and last year processed 1.2 mil­lion tests for patients.

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