A legal row over a contract for provision of enhanced blood services at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital, worth up to €30m, is to be fast-tracked in the Commercial Court.
The cases concerns a contract to provide services for a state of the art blood sciences laboratory at the hospital.
Beckman Coulter Diagnostics Ltd, which already provides various services to the hospital, initiated the case after unsucessfully bidding for the 15 year contract, worth between €15m-€30m, for implementation and operation of a blood sciences laboratory.
The case was admitted to the Commercial Court list on Monday on the application of the hospital and the matter was returned to later this month.
In the proceedings, the company claims the hospital failed to comply with various requirements of European and Irish law in its conduct of the procurement process.
A laboratory manager at Beaumont Hospital, Peter O’Leary, said in an affidavit the hospital is undertaking a long awaited and urgently required laboratory modernisation programme and the contract is the core component of it.
The primary objective is to optimise patient care through the delivery of substantial improvements in respect of the timeliness, quality and safety of all results from blood science tests, he said.
He said the contract entails a managed equipment service arrangment where the footprint of the existing pathology laboratories will be extended and the most up to date technology provided for specified tests.
Beaumont Hospital expects the new laboratories and equipment provided under the contract will significantly improve turnaround times on blood samples and reduce the time patients spend in the emergency deparment as well as helping hospital staff make diagnoses more promptly, he said.
The new facilites will also enable the hospital to perform the most clincially appropriate diagnostic tests in the most efficient manner possible, he added.