By Morgan Chilson, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Federal funding losses upended a courier service used to transport health and water samples to state laboratories, and a Kansas agency is working to determine a way to make sure tests arrive quickly, a state official said.
Ashley Goss, deputy secretary of public health at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, testified before the Legislative Budget Committee on Aug. 26 that COVID-19 relief funds were used to create the courier service routes in 2021.
The service transported COVID-19 tests and samples to state laboratories and also has been used by local health departments and public water supply systems to deliver tests and water samples.
Of 154,196 samples delivered to state laboratories last year, 81,510 were delivered by courier service, Goss said.
However, when the federal government pulled funding, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment explored alternatives for test and sample delivery, which must occur in a certain timeframe, sometimes within 30 hours, she said.
“In the two years prior to the courier service, the average transit time from collection of a sample to delivery at the lab was 3 days, and since the courier service was brought on in June 2021, the average time has been reduced to 1.8 days,” Goss said.
The difference in transit time is meaningful, she said.
“Clients and patients receive results quicker, and it has a significant impact on direct patient care and earlier notification to public water supplies of hazardous incidences,” Goss said.
KDHE eliminated courier routes on July 1 to extend the federal dollars into 2026, dropping from 432 environmental and 132 health clients to 192 environmental and 68 health clients, she said.
Brad Pendergast, city administrator in Scott City, said 2024 was challenging as the western Kansas town figured out a system to send in four monthly water samples. It wasn’t a budget issue, but slow transport of the samples was “a really big headache,” he said.
“It was a source of frustration and a lot of 2024 was like that,” Pendergast said. “At a minimum, we had 10 samples come back and we had to ship them again.”
At some points, they were driving samples 35 miles to Garden City to ship them by FedEx, but eventually the town made arrangements for a FedEx pickup at a local hardware store, he said.
Health departments and public water departments will have to absorb the cost of shipping samples, Goss said.
Goss told the budget committee local KDHE partners advocated for additional state dollars to replace the lost federal funding but were unsuccessful.
“Many local communities still face the challenges of now being short of funding and having to backfill their local budgets to cover paying for their own transit of samples,” she said.
KDHE is trying to get a bid from the U.S. Postal Service to determine if it could fill the gap created by the end of the courier service, Goss said.
