Our Tweed Heads team are settling into their new high-tech pathology laboratory and collection centre at the brand-new Tweed Valley Hospital in Cudgen, which opened to patients on Tuesday 14 May.

A key fea­ture of Tweed Val­ley Hospital’s $723.3 mil­lion rede­vel­op­ment, the lab is four times the size of the old lab and fea­tures the lat­est cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, mak­ing it future-proofed to meet the grow­ing demands of grow­ing Tweed-Byron region.

Lab­o­ra­to­ry Man­ag­er Owen Van Eck said the new lab­o­ra­to­ry has been designed and built to meet the cur­rent and future needs of the grow­ing Tweed-Byron com­mu­ni­ty, and will bring enor­mous ben­e­fits to the region.

“The sci­en­tists, pathol­o­gists and tech­ni­cal staff work­ing in our lab­o­ra­to­ries are crit­i­cal to most aspects of clin­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing in a hos­pi­tal. Ensur­ing they have state-of-art equip­ment and infra­struc­ture is cen­tral to the effi­cient pro­vi­sion of clin­i­cal ser­vices,” Owen said.

“The expand­ed foot­print and new equip­ment will improve the way staff work in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and car­ry out pathol­o­gy test­ing, with oppor­tu­ni­ties for automa­tion, stream­lin­ing of test­ing, and for inter­ac­tion between spe­cial­ties that are increas­ing­ly rely­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar technologies.”

The Tweed lab per­forms around 16,000 clin­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions each month.

“Our team is to be con­grat­u­lat­ed for ensur­ing essen­tial lab oper­a­tions con­tin­ued dur­ing the tran­si­tion from the old lab to the new lab.”

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

“The lab­o­ra­to­ry is ide­al­ly posi­tioned on the low­er ground floor next to the Emer­gency Depart­ment (ED) – enhanc­ing clin­i­cal inter­ac­tions for staff and our patients – and will allow us to pro­vide rapid turn­around times for ser­vices to crit­i­cal parts of the hos­pi­tal cam­pus, such as ED, mater­ni­ty, ICU and the can­cer ser­vices,” Owen said.

This means patients and clin­i­cians will be able to access crit­i­cal patient results and blood prod­ucts when they need them urgently.

There is also a larg­er net­worked pneu­mat­ic tube sys­tem (like a chute) with ded­i­cat­ed ED “fast lane” to expe­dite urgent ED spec­i­mens direct­ly into the laboratory.

A new pathol­o­gy out­pa­tient col­lec­tion ser­vice is locat­ed with­in out­pa­tients to improve the patient experience.

The new lab pro­vides a range of ser­vices for Tweed Val­ley Hos­pi­tal including:

• Expert clin­i­cal con­sul­ta­tion and advice
• Diag­nos­tic test­ing – includ­ing haema­tol­ogy, chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy, trans­fu­sion, micro­bi­ol­o­gy, mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy and enhanced anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy, includ­ing histopathology.
• Open plan core lab­o­ra­to­ry with direct access to spec­i­men recep­tion improv­ing work­flow and access to patient results.
• Point of Care testing
• An inpa­tient and out­pa­tient col­lec­tion service
• Teach­ing and train­ing for med­ical staff, med­ical stu­dents, pathol­o­gy trainees and hos­pi­tal scientists
• Facil­i­tat­ing research across the Local Health District

Thank you to Lab Man­ag­er Owen Van Eck, Pre and Post Ana­lyt­i­cal Man­ag­er Sarah Noakes, Bio-Chem­istry Depart­ment lead Ter­ry Wil­son, Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor Ali­son Win­ning, Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er Michael Crowther and Ser­vice Plan­ner Dinah Con­stan­tine for lead­ing this redevelopment.

Our new contact details

From Wednes­day 15 May, you will find our col­lec­tion ser­vice locat­ed on the ground floor at Out­pa­tients (Ambu­la­to­ry Care).

Phone: 02 6677 2468 and Fax: 02 6677 3690. Open­ing hours: 7:00am – 3.30pm, Mon­day to Fri­day. Closed Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and Pub­lic Holidays.

Our lab­o­ra­to­ry is locat­ed on the low­er ground floor and oper­ates 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Phone: 02 6677 3660 and Fax: 02 6677 3692.

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