Population boom has Calgary medical labs jammed  Brockville Recorder & Times CAROL HARRINGTON CALGARY (CP) - An aging and booming population has put Calgary's medical laboratories at the breaking point, lab officials said Wednesday. "The public needs to know this is just critical," said Daphne Kuchinski, communications officer for the Calgary Laboratory Services.  "The people of Calgary need to know we can't keep maintaining this pace."  The number of Calgary medical lab tests has increased by 30 per cent over the past three years while lab space has been cut by half, she said.  Kuchinski said Calgarians aren't having to wait any longer for test results, but one technician disagreed.  "There is a slower turnaround time for tests, but we are doing the best we can," said Diana Emshey, a 15-year lab technician.  "There are not enough pathologists in Calgary to read specimens and that is why a lot of skin biopsies are taking a long time to come back to see if they have cancer or not," said Emshey.  Calgary's medical labs are run by the province's Calgary Regional Health Authority and two private lab companies - Edmonton-based Kasper Medical Laboratories Inc. and MDS Inc. in Toronto.  The three entities merged as Calgary Laboratory Services in 1995, shortly after the Klein government cut funding for private community laboratories by 40 per cent.  Workers in three large laboratories moved to one main site three years ago - to an old downtown building lab technicians claim is unsafe because it's overcrowded, infested with mice and has power shortages.  "It's a dump," Emshey said. "Right now we are working elbow to elbow. We have to walk sideways to get by people."  When workers sometimes push their chairs in to let others get by their station, stacks of glass plates holding bacterial cultures tumble to the floor.  Employees take blood samples, swabs and fluids to test for infections and diseases, including meningitis and the flesh-eating disease.  "The aerosols can be potentially harmful to us," Emshey said.  An Alberta Health spokesman said the Calgary Regional Health Authority is responsible for the labs.  Health Minister Gary Mar is "aware of the situation, he is watching it closely," Chris Dawson said.  "Clearly, the province provides money to the regional health authority and it's up to them to determine how best to spend that."  Authority officials refused to comment Wednesday.  Ken Brass, president of Kasper Medical Laboratories Inc., said his company is facing "several challenges."  "We are certainly very concerned about the working conditions for our employees," Brass said.  "We want to obviously make sure that patient care and integrity of all our results is top-notch."  Brass denied that understaffing is forcing Calgarians to wait longer for test results.  "I think that there have been some great improvements to the lab system across the province."  Brass said the lab services are searching for a new site after the authority cancelled plans last month to construct a new $20 million building at the University of Calgary.  Brass said he didn't know why the project was nixed.  He also would not say whether his company is getting more or less money from the province since the Klein government cuts in the mid-1990s.  Before Calgary Laboratory Services was formed, lab tests in Calgary were conducted in three central locations with 5,722 square metres.  But that amount of space has been reduced to 2,898 square metres at Calgary's main laboratory where there are up to 375 employees, Kuchinski said.  The number of lab tests at the main lab has increased by almost one million each year since 1997, she added. Calgary's population has jumped by almost 1 million in the same time period.  17:29 07/22/2000 http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/000720/n072016.html