Limited capacity forces GPHC’s Medical Lab to subcontract tests

Nov 10, 2017 News

– Parliamentary Committee hears

As the premier public health facility, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC] is expected to deliver a wide variety of health services, including those that are offered by its Medical Laboratory. But the laboratory has been faced with some shortcomings.
This situation was brought to the attention of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Social Services when its members paid a visit to the GPHC earlier this year.
Speaking with Director of the Medical Laboratory, Dr. Fiona Rambarran, the Committee was made aware of the fact that tests such as infectious markers are not done at the laboratory. While such tests are usually done at the National Public Health Reference Laboratory, Dr. Rambaran, revealed that tests such as Hepatitis C and Dengue were not routinely available at the hospital lab.
This development, according to her, has thus placed the lab at a disadvantage. In fact, the hospital is, as a result, forced to subcontract these tests.
But there are some services that the lab is able to offer today that were not previously available, according to Dr. Rambarran. She disclosed for instance that the laboratory is at present able to offer blood gases test.
A blood gas test is ordered when someone has symptoms of an oxygen/carbon dioxide or pH imbalance, such as difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting. It may also be ordered when someone is known to have respiratory, metabolic or kidney disease and is experiencing respiratory distress.
There have been other moves that have been made to enhance the operation of the lab. According to Dr. Rambarran, the Department was recently given a new Chemistry and haematology analyser machines. A coagulation analyser would be obtained shortly.
Added to this, the Director revealed that the Blood Bank had improved its collection to meet the laboratory needs and that the stock out had reduced significantly over the past two years. However, Dr. Rambarran admitted that the stocking-out situation still remains a challenge when it comes to blood banking in relation to platelets and plasma.
Currently, the Medical Laboratory has five sections — Bio Chemistry, Urology, Haematology, Compatibility and Micro Biology.
Dr. Rambarran disclosed that the Lab is one designed to conduct all the basic testing and processing of samples for all the regional hospitals and health centres in Region Four as well as referrals from hospitals across the country.
However, since the lab has been tasked with doing tests for other institutions, Dr. Rambarran said that the large number of samples to be processed and the results to be dispersed usually pose a challenge.
According to the Committee in its report of the visit, “[Dr. Rambarran] explained that sometimes calls are made to regional hospitals and health centres to give them their test results and the copies of those results would be sent subsequently.”
Dr. Rambarran also told the Committee that the lab has a number of results for patients who have not returned to uplift them. The Medical Laboratory Director has moreover suggested that “if the lab implements an electronic system, results would be transmitted easily, staff would be able to monitor patients in the system and the services offered by the department would be improved making it more compliant with the law and laboratory standards.”
Following the visit, a number of recommendations were made by the Committee for the Medical Laboratory. These include the implementation of an electronic data base system to store and transfer results; the procurement of special markers to facilitate tumour, infectious markers, among others.
The Committee also recommended that the lab should have trained technicians and that the hospital train personnel for maintenance of equipment.

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