Five years experience as a participating laboratory in External quality assessment scheme – NABH Accredited blood bank from rural area

We participated in External Quality Assessment Scheme (EQAS) during the year 2008 to 2013 as per recommendation by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH). We present our five years’ experience. Analyses of results have helped us to significantly improve our transfusion service. INTRODUCTION: Quality assurance in blood bank includes active participation in EQAS. Such programme offers valuable benefits in terms of performance evaluation, improvement in patient care and safety and overall quality of blood bank practices. METHOD AND MATERIALS: For EQAS, we receive blood sample from Jaipur for ABO grouping, Du typing, direct and indirect Coomb’s test and transfusion transmitted disease(TTI) six monthly and from Indian red cross society, Bombay for TTIs six monthly. We analysed the results of EQAS from 2008 to 2013. RESULT: We observed 100% correlation in ABO grouping, Du typing, direct and indirect Coomb’s test and HBsAg. Discordant results were observed in HIV ½, anti-HCV and VDRL once. In root cause analysis we found that false positive results in HIV 1/2 were due to random error and ELISA washer machine break down. Manual washing was done. The false negative result in anti-HCV was due to sample integrity. VDRL was done by RPR card test method, which has low sensitivity than treponema pallidum hemagglutination method. CONCLUSION: We believe that participation in EQAS program will definitely improve quality of hospital service because no health care facility can be totally self-sufficient and there is always an inclination for improvement and development in a system.