Doha: With a recent coveted accreditation, Primary Health Care Corporation’s (PHCC) laboratories have become one of the world’s largest group of network laboratories accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) outside the USA and also the largest conglomerate in the public sector with such credit, according to Kiran Govindan Kutty, Manager of Laboratory, Clinical Operations at PHCC.
The CAP accreditation is the world’s largest accreditation process for clinical laboratories. It is considered the gold standard in lab accreditation.
“With this accreditation, PHCC laboratories get into this elite class of laboratories,” Kiran Kutty told The Peninsula.
There are more than 8,000 laboratories accredited globally so far by the CAP. The CAP, is a highly prestigious institution recognised for accrediting laboratories globally and has the most comprehensive scientifically endorsed international laboratory standards that PHCC needs to comply with. An accredited laboratory inspires confidence in its clients in terms of quality patient care by providing reliable, accurate and timely results.
“It is worth mentioning that all the laboratories across PHCC have got accredited without a single deficiency or nonconformance which is commendable in an accreditation of such high repute,” Kiran Kutty said.
The leadership, commitment and support from the PHCC Managing Director Dr. Maryam Abdul Malik and Executive Director Dr. Samya Ahmad Abdalla and their vision in alignment with the organisational goals were instrumental in achieving the CAP accreditation in spite of the challenges faced due to the pandemic.
"The CAP accreditation brings the PHCC labs at par with other healthcare laboratories in the country such as the Hamad Medical Corporation and Sidra Medicine, who are also CAP accredited. This means that clients have standardised continuum of care from the primary to the tertiary spectrum of healthcare across the country,” said Kiran Kutty.
“The accreditation inspection by the CAP lasted for six days with a total of seven inspectors. Each lab in the PHCC was inspected for a whole day. In addition, the entire organization wide laboratory management practice was also inspected by two inspectors for two days,” he added.
“The CAP has detailed accreditation criteria and standards pertaining to all technical activities and sections of the laboratory which were used to evaluate the laboratories’ conformity. During the audits, the inspectors also checked for the laboratories previous two-years performance to ensure that the laboratories demonstrated continuous improvements,” said Kiran Kutty.
“The leadership skills of the Laboratory Leads, the clinical acumen of the pathologists combined with the competency and technical skills of the technologists were thoroughly and successfully assessed and were the key to achieving accreditation without any deficiencies,” he added. The CAP accreditation is valid for two years and mandates yearly internal inspections to ensure the labs are consistent with their performance.
“The re-inspection by CAP would be in April 2023 and the renewal of accreditation would be based on the successful completion of those inspections,” said Kiran Kutty.
PHCC, meanwhile shall be proactively conducting internal audits every six months to ensure that the laboratories are a step ahead in maintaining the quality and identifying areas of improvement.
“In order to ensure that PHCC delivers accurate and reliable results all the time, the CAP evaluates and monitors blind testing materials through the CAP Proficiency testing program every quarter, where in the laboratory’s performance is peer reviewed with other global laboratories,” he added.
