Full presentation by Dr. Mohd Jamsani bin Mat Salleh delivered to healthcare and laboratory medicine leaders at the Roche Efficiency Days (RED) 2018: REDefining perspectives in Guangzhou, China.

Laboratory networks require a degree of central management and direction setting through common policies and coordination for various operational functions such as procurement, quality assurance and logistics to ensure collective benefits of quality, speed and cost across all laboratories.

The topic discussed will be based on our experience in managing Penang Pathology services as a single entity through tender consolidation and integration of purchasing at a state level for six public hospitals in Penang. The integration and consolidation leads to standardisation in laboratory diagnostics with the establishment of uniform test menu, measuring system and test method to reduce unnecessary diversity of technology and testing platforms. This allows standardised results reporting for better monitoring of patients across the laboratory network. The standardisation of measuring systems coupled with multi-site laboratory information system (LIS) enables us to optimise the operating procedures thereby improving the overall turnaround time.

Procurement through an integrated statewide tender with the sharing of laboratory workload ensures a common price of reagents and consumables across all hospitals. Reagent and consumables sharing across the network reduces wastage for a more cost-effective solution. Overall, the re-engineering of reagents and consumables purchasing through an integrated statewide tender ensure better management of laboratory network and improve the laboratory quality performance, TAT and cost, which ultimately leads to an improvement in patient care.