Recent reporting from the Australian Financial Review shows that Capital Crescent, the private equity firm that owns Australian Clinical Labs, is experiencing some big financial problems. And they aren’t the first private pathology company to experience financial problems. But what happens to the delivery of pathology in public hospitals when private pathology providers cut staff and services; or worse, go out of business? We’ve regularly pointed out the real dangers in allowing private providers to deliver key clinical services, like pathology, in our public hospitals. It’s becoming more obvious that private providers are not more effective or efficient than in-house pathology services and are contributing to problems in delivering world-class healthcare; on the contrary. It is a major problem when turn-around times increase because pathology labs in public hospitals are closed and the work moved to locations based hundreds of kilometres away. Regardless of the strenuous defence of these moves by a hospital’s management, the research overwhelmingly shows that doing tests closer to where the sample is taken significantly improves turn-around times, reduces chances for spoiled samples and speeds up the time for a patient to receive treatment. Increasing turn-around times for test results can have adverse outcomes for patients as test results need to be known before treatment(s) can start. Or it can result in patients taking up beds to only be told that there is nothing to worry about. It also has flow on impacts in local regional and rural communities by increasing unemployment and reducing confidence in local health services. There are usually significant amounts of experience lost when private pathology services take over in-house testing. And there are unexpected consequences for other healthcare services like aged care, which rely on local pathology services in order to deliver care and ensure the health and well-being of mature aged people. The reality of private pathology providers shutting laboratories was sheeted home in 2017 with Clinical Labs abruptly announcing the closure of two health service pathology laboratories. With the privatisation of essential clinical pathology services in public hospitals, there is a need to ask: what happens to the quality of care in our public hospitals when a private pathology provider goes out of business or decides to walk away from a contract? Judging by the Victorian Government’s apparent approval of the continued use of privatised pathology services, despite...