HYDERABAD: Government hospitals routinely perform various laboratory tests for thousands of patients on a daily basis. But how accurate and precise are the results of these tests?
Researchers at the Osmania Medical College conducted a study to find an answer to this question and the results point towards a need for stringent quality control measures. This after there seems to be an immense scope of improvement in lab results delivered to patients.
The researchers estimated sigma metrics for eight most-commonly performed tests at the Osmania General Hospital -- glucose, urea, creatinine, total proteins, total bilirubin, cholesterol, albumin and uric acid, to find out where does the OGH laboratory stand on the performance scales of the world-renowned six sigma test.
The outcome of the sigma metrics test is judged on a scale of six, with sigma metrics six considered to be the best score. A six or above score indicates perfection, as it represented a meagre 3.4 defects per million. The researchers found that five of the eight commonly performed tests failed to meet the minimum quality standard of scoring sigma metrics, 3 -- urea, creatinine, total bilirubin, cholesterol, albumin.
Two tests just met the minimum acceptable sigma metrics score between 3 and 6 - glucose and total protein, while only one test, uric acid, scored a sigma metric of above six. The study reports that while imprecision in results was a problem in most tests, in case of albumin, the results saw inaccuracy as well.
Not just govt hospitals
A senior doctor from OGH told Express, “To maintain good sigma metric the guidelines suggest to run control eight times, which a government lab cannot afford financially. Even the technicians do not take up the task of running eight quality checks. But this does not mean that private hospitals maintain sigma metrics-level of standards. Very rarely do they take up the test, the outcomes of which are also not published.”