Evaluation of Sigma-Metric and Application of Quality Tools in Clinical Laboratory of a Tertiary Care Hospital

Variability in analytical performance of some analyte indicated the need of evaluation of quality plan of our laboratory. We tried to put the same degree of effort into our quality metrics as we put into the laboratory processes themselves. Application of six sigma methodologies improve the quality by focusing on the root causes of the problems in performance and analyzing by flowcharts, fishbone diagrams and other quality tools. Sigma metric was calculated for laboratory parameters for a period of 8 months during 2018-19. The analytes with poor sigma metric were free Thyroxine (FT3, FT4), Sodium, Calcium and Magnesium. Sigma metric of free Thyroxine (FT3, FT4), Sodium, Calcium and Magnesium were below 3. A road map for process improvement was designed with DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) model to solve the issue. Possible causes for low analytical performance of the particular analytes were depicted in Fishbone diagram. The Fishbone analysis identified the water quality issues with electrolyte analysis while high ambient temperature was culprit for poor assay performance of free Thyroxine. Sigma metric of the analytical performance was assessed once again after root cause analysis. Sigmametric showed marked improvement in control phase. Identification of problems led to reduction in non value added work leading to adequate resource utilization by addressing the priority issue. Therefore, DMAIC tool with Fish bone model analysis can be recommended as a well suited method for troubleshooting in poor performance of laboratory parameter.