Stockport NHS Foundation Trust is the first site in the UK to meet the new Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA) standards for point-of-care diagnostic testing (POCT). Following a two-day assessment, the trust has achieved CPA accreditation for blood gas, blood glucose, international normalised ratio (INR) and total haemoglobin testing at the point of care.
The assessment team was extremely impressed by the quality of the trust's POCT service, commenting that "the term 'embedded into an organisation' is too commonly used, but never have I seen it so true as in how POCT is delivered and supported at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust."
Stepping Hill Hospital POCT coordinator Samantha Ekin puts cobas IT 1000 at the heart of POCT. She said: "cobas IT 1000 has been vital in moving towards CPA accreditation for POCT. It provides access to important information regarding reagents (such as lot number, when they were first in use and expiry dates), activation dates for connected instruments and all quality control data. It also has an operator database, which includes dates of certification/recertification and a record of how often an operator has used an instrument, as well as recording all the patient results."
In conclusion, Samantha said: "Although accreditation for POCT is not mandatory, the new CPA POCT standards give coordinators a structured framework to follow. This will help to ensure that POCT services are robust and quality assured, with quality indicators that are measurable and where clinical effectiveness is the driver for POCT."
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