Dr. Ray Walley:

The evidence, based on Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Holland, is that one gets vertical integration. What happens is the corporates have a voracious appetite for buying up all health care. They buy the diagnostics and rates of referrals to different diagnostics occur, not necessarily because the corporates are doing this. The problem is one loses continuity. If I have a patient for whom a blood test was done a year or six months ago, it may not need to be repeated. The problem is, if one does not know the patient, one will order the blood test. That is where all the exponential costs of this go and it is a waste of money. We will need more money in an era of scarce resources and more need. We need to ensure there is an evidence base against what we do.