Philippines Diagnostic Pathology Laboratory Benchmarking

Introduction To ensure continuous quality improvement, laboratories need to obtain data about best practice from peers. Data about analytical EQA is available but far less is available about other important aspects of laboratory performance. There is a Roche Diagnostics Survey of laboratories which provides benchmarking in key areas of laboratory performance. Methodology The Roche Diagnostics Survey included 1058 laboratories from 14 countries in the Asia Pacific Region with both developing and developed nations. The data were collected in 2017 but the survey has been collecting data each second year since 2011. Data was collected in the areas of quality, speed and cost. Results The results for the Philippines was compared with other countries in the Asia Pacific Region. Broadly it was found that 42% of all laboratories in the Region were accredited to ISO 15189 or ISO 9001 and that 50% of laboratories were in an External Quality Assurance (EQA) program. Compared to other countries in the survey, the Philippines laboratories had fewer sites with ISO 15189 and with Lean Six Sigma improvement deployment. There are six laboratories in the Philippines that are accredited to ISO 15189. There was a greater emphasis on customer satisfaction related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as turnaround time monitoring, cost reduction and employee productivity. Conclusion Benchmarking can highlight the differences in the apparent quality of laboratory services compared to their peers and may lead to improvement. The benchmarking comparison has identified opportunities for Philippine laboratories to improve including obtaining ISO 15189 accreditation, implementing laboratory information systems and concentrating on Lean practices to improve productivity. The Roche scheme provides an ongoing (growing) large sample of benchmarks that can be used by participants to improve their performance and the performance of individual countries.