External Quality Assessment of Thai Clinical Chemistry Laboratory during the year 2020-2021

Abstract

         The External Quality Assessment (EQA) is a component of the quality assurance system to reflect the operating conditions of the analysis to a certain extent. It can be taken into consideration in planning the further development of the quality assurance system. This report is a retrospective study from the results covering 2 consecutive years (2020-2021) of the quality assessment of the analysis of clinical chemistry of 379 member laboratories, both public and private laboratories, participating in the project. The results present the status of the analysis of clinical chemistry laboratories in Thailand with an assessment method recommended by the World Health Organization and the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry using the Variance Index Score (VIS) to indicate the quality of laboratories analysis. The low value of VIS indicates that the laboratory results are close to the mean result from all laboratories. The Mean Variance Index Score (MVIS) indicates the overall quality of the laboratory, when it is less than 50 = very good, in the range 51-100 = good, in the range 101-150 = fair and if it is greater than 150 = should be improved.

         The results showed that the MVIS level of the member laboratories decreased indicating that the quality system has improved. It is evident that community hospitals have significantly low MVIS values over the past 2 years (P<0.05) which is likely due to their interest in quality assurance. The personnel work with the aim and determination to develop the quality system to meet the standards. Moreover, knowledge has been restored and experience has been enhanced from various agencies. It was also found that the government laboratories had an acceptable MVIS rating of 6 cycles < 150, while the community hospital laboratories had an acceptable MVIS of 57%. For non-government laboratories had an acceptable MVIS of 85.2%.

         Attention and support should be focused and delivered to these groups to promote continuous quality improvement and enabling them to national or international quality standard.