Less than five out of more than sixty medical laboratories in Jamaica have achieved accreditation status which indicates that the critical decisions of Medical Doctors are prone to error in medical diagnosis. It is apparent that there are a plethora of medical laboratories in operation across the island of Jamaica without adhering to international standards. This indicates that these organizations are not qualified to offer any type of service to the Jamaican people. There are no regulations to mandate the accreditation of medical laboratories in Jamaica due to the fact that the Medical Laboratories 2005 Act is yet to be passed into Law. The only countries in the Caribbean which makes it compulsory for medical laboratories to be licensed include Barbados, Guyana, Belize and the Bahamas.
Based on current statistics, Jamaica has 46 private medical labs, 52 public medical laboratories and NPHL. Since 2015, Jamaica is a signatory to the International Laboratory Accreditation Corporation for the ISO 15189 standards. ISO 15189 is the medical standard that governs the medical laboratories on the international market. The medical laboratories in Jamaica that are accredited by JANAAC (Jamaica National Agency for Accreditation) are deemed to meet international standards based on the criteria outlined in ISO 15189. Seventy to Eighty percent of the medical decisions that Physicians make are based on the results obtained from medical laboratories. Hence, there is a need for high standards, quality control and quality assurance in order to ensure confidence in the results produced from medical labs. Once the Medical Laboratories 2005 Act is passed then it will make accreditation mandatory in Jamaica. Based on the standards established in ISO 15189 medical lab standards there is increasing international pressure for medical laboratories in Jamaica to achieve accreditation status. Accreditation is dependent on the Total Quality Management of medical laboratories and thus it will raise the bar for medical testing in Jamaica.
Accreditation refers to the process by which an authoritative body grants formal recognition to an entity, based on specific international standards, to carry out particular services. On the other hand, quality is defined as the degree of excellence and the building blocks of quality include: quality systems, quality control and quality assurance. It has been promulgated over the years that total quality management which leads to accreditation for medical laboratories will result in increased revenue from medical tourism. Medical Laboratories are required to operate in an environment that is regulated by a quality system to achieve the standards of excellence necessary to provide high levels of patient safety. Quality assurance is the planned and systematic activities that are implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements are fulfilled. Quality control is the tool that is used in QA to control and monitor the inherent variables that lead to errors. It is a tool used to fulfill requirements for quality. Once Total Quality Management is properly structured then the medical lab will produce results that are accurate and precise, cost efficient, and customer friendly. Accuracy is a test result which is close to its true value while precision is whether the same test can be run on the same sample several times and produce the same result. All analytical methods have some error and an error is the difference between the true value and the obtained value. For more information on quality and accreditation you can call us: 18765685178 or email us: gavmedsolutions@gmail.com.
