The division of wellness signed a contract with Prairie A single Options in 2020 for one particular year with 4 automatic renewals for 4 years afterward, but in January, the agency stated it had opted out of renewing. General, the state paid the corporation $two.five million for its solutions, according to nonprofit outlet The Frontier.
Oklahoma lawmakers are preparing to place much more funds into the state’s public wellness laboratory, which could bring total investment up to about $39 million.
The lab had been in disrepair for decades, and at one particular point was even at danger of losing its accreditation. In late 2020, Gov. Kevin Stitt announced his administration would create a replacement. Nevertheless, as an alternative of developing close to its current facility in Oklahoma City’s biomedical district, it relocated the lab to Stillwater. There have been a number of challenges considering the fact that, such as a federal investigation that located the lab mishandled COVID samples.
“There are some items that … we are not one hundred % delighted with,” Senate Well being and Human Solutions Chairman Paul Rosino stated throughout a Senate hearing final week to go over funding for the lab. “Some of the solutions we are having completed that would usually be completed at our wellness lab, we’re getting to send other locations.”
In a written statement, an Oklahoma State Division of Well being spokesman stated the tests getting outsourced call for a larger level of biosafety authorization.
Well being labs are assigned diverse biosafety levels, primarily based on how substantially wellness danger the lab can include with its gear and protocols. There are 4 levels. The initially level does not call for substantially: normal individual protective gear, a sink for handwashing. These are permitted to perform with microbes that are not extremely hazardous. Appropriate now, Oklahoma’s wellness lab is at a level two.
“Some of these tests also call for a larger level of biosafety precautions, which includes level three precautions,” spokesman Erika Rankin wrote. “As an instance, this group would include things like bioterrorism agent identification. A single test that is definitely much more frequent and is the most typical test we presently outsource is for Tuberculosis.”
They’re also outsourcing uncommon tests such as these screening for Haemophilus bacterial infection, Group B Streptococcus and West Nile Virus.
On Wednesday, the Home passed Senate Bill 1131. It is essentially a technicality. Back in 2017, the Legislature gave the state division of wellness permission to take out $58 million in bonds to spend for a new public wellness lab. Beneath the Stitt Administration, the agency ended up applying state and federal funds as an alternative, and officials told the Legislature that the bonds had been no longer vital. SB 1131 revokes permission for these bonds.
Rep. Ryan Martinez, R-Edmond, carried the bill. Just after the Stitt Administration announced the move to Stillwater, Martinez was one particular of the most vocal critics. He was concerned about moving the lab throughout the pandemic, as properly as moving it away from the biomedical district, which also homes the OU Well being campus, the Oklahoma Blood Institute, and the Oklahoma Health-related Investigation Foundation. He issued a press release at the time lambasting the selection and saying he’d appear for a way to file legislation to block the move.
“I did share a lot of issues, and I nonetheless do, about the wellness lab getting in Stillwater,” he stated throughout Wednesday’s floor hearing.
He and Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Del City, revisited some of the challenges that have come up with the lab. That integrated an earlier controversy about outsourcing. There were challenges with crucial blood screenings performed for all newborns in the state, and the lab started outsourcing them following the move, when there had been issues about the lab’s new protocols. There had been also issues about the lab’s privatization.
“There are some challenges I’d really like to investigate with you and perform via, to make that much more accountable to the Oklahoma public, and make confident that citizens are having the testing and all the great items they deserve from the state wellness lab,” Martinez stated to Fugate throughout the hearing.
In late 2020, the agency announced it was bringing in a private contractor to handle the lab. The management corporation was Prairie A single Options, a subsidiary of the Oklahoma State University Investigation Foundation produced a handful of weeks ahead of the announcement. Numerous investigations into the lab, both by federal regulators and by regional media, located important challenges with the lab’s operation, which includes dire worker shortages. The sudden move to Stillwater contributed to the shortages when lengthy-time workers chose not to relocate.