Compliance with Accreditation and Standardization of Point of Care Testing -from Vision to Action

Point of care testing is one of the most rapidly growing fields of laboratory medicine since the past few decades. As more and more laboratory tests are getting decentralised and performed by non-laboratory trained personnel it becomes very important that all procedures are reviewed and signed off by authorized individuals. Currently, accreditation programs such as CLIA, CAP, JCI, COLA are focusing strongly on the quality of POCT. They help the end users to abide with all aspects of POCT testing such as proficiency testing, training and competency, validation, quality assurance, documentation, audits etc. Standardization improves patient care and helps in reducing medical errors that could occur due to point of care. Using the same device and technology across multiple sites can reduce variation of result, improve staff efficiency and help in sharing the same policy and procedures across multiple POCT sites in an organization.