Quality Assurance and Quality Control in Clinical Laboratories

Health care delivery is no longer a simple process of examining the patient and giving him a prescription. Over the years there has been rapid expansion in the various branches of health care services. As part of this expansion process and explosion of scientific medical knowledge, laboratory diagnosis has gained tremendous importance in today’s practice. Especially in our country since the beginning of 80’s we have been witnessing significant growth in laboratory services. Through quality management process the laboratory can ensure that the result being issued by the laboratory is reliable to allow decisions to be taken with confidence. Quality control and quality assurance are parts of quality management. Quality control is focused on fulfilling quality requirements, whereas quality assurance is focused on providing confidence that quality requirements are fulfilled. By utilizing quality control practices, a laboratory is able to find and correct flaws in the analytical processes of a lab before potentially incorrect patient results are released.Pulse Vol.8 January-December 2015 p.62-65