Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd has called for a comprehensive overhaul of quality assurance systems in Nigerian medical laboratories, warning that inaccurate diagnostic results pose grave risks to patient survival. The call was made by its Managing Director, Mr Chijioke Onyia, in Lagos ahead of the firm’s inaugural Quality Assurance Summit themed “From Bench to Benchmark: Raising Laboratory Quality Standards for Patient Care,” organised in partnership with global diagnostics firm Bio-Rad.
Onyia said quality in laboratory medicine must go beyond producing technically acceptable figures to embedding continuous measurement and systematic improvement across the entire analytical pathway — from test request, sample collection and transportation to analysis and clinical interpretation. He noted that lab data inform over 70 per cent of clinical decisions, and compromised results mislead clinicians, lead to wrong prescriptions, delay intervention and contribute to preventable deaths.
He stressed that viewing quality control merely as a checklist for regulatory compliance rather than an organisational culture compromises patient safety, adding that “people, processes and technology remain the core drivers of laboratory excellence.” The summit is expected to convene medical laboratory scientists, pathologists, healthcare managers and regulators to address systemic gaps and strengthen total quality management systems.
