An Update On Best Practices and Regulatory Requirements for the Improvement of Clinical Laboratory Services through Quality

The aim of this study is to emphasize the need for accurate, relevant and reliable results provided by the clinical laboratories, in order to achieve the best patient outcomes. The improvement of clinical laboratory services through quality is a continuous process, which includes constant changes and new regulatory requirements. Further efforts must be made to raise the awareness of all health personnel involved in the total testing process and highlight the importance of quality indicator implementation for improving the quality of laboratory services and patient safety. Laboratories and physicians must audit, update and continuously e their critical result management practices in order to provide safe and reliable care to patients. Moreover, implementation of six-sigma, a state-of–the-art quality management strategy, can further improve laboratory quality, by identifying biased or imprecise assays, so that appropriate quality monitoring strategies can be used. Harmonization of the total testing process, as a process of recognizing, understanding, and explaining differences and taking steps to achieve uniformity of results is of utmost importance for the use of data obtained from different laboratories interchangeably.