Challenges in recruiting medical lab technologists have forced the Huron-Perth Healthcare Alliance to restructure its laboratory operations.
Program Director of Diagnostics Graeme Johnston said they will no longer be offering walk-in community services.
Out-patients who get a written order from their physician for lab work are being asked to go to commercial laboratories, such as LifeLabs and Dynacare.
Johnston said schools are not graduating enough medical lab technologists to keep pace with the numbers that are leaving or retiring.
"We are having our medical lab technologists train and orient medical lab assistants," he said. "And we've always had medical laboratory assistants, they're just having them work more scoped than what they've had them do in the past."
Alternate laboratories for community patient specimen collection include: -- LifeLabs, with locations in Stratford, Listowel, Zurich, Mitchell, Milverton and Wingham -- Dynacare Laboratories and Health Services Centre with locations in Stratford, Seaforth and Goderich.
