Interax would like to congratulate William Osler Health System Laboratory Department on achieving accreditation to ISO 15189Plus by QMP-LS in Conjunction with the Standards Council of Canada. William Osler is a long time user of Paradigm Software to manage their quality system, Pat Burton Quality Coordinator feels it was central in the success of their quality program providing a solid structure on which to build the ISO 15180Plus program.

Pat also said there is always concern on the amount of resources this will take but as your quality management system evolves and matures, there’s less work to keep it going. The quality framework is in place. There are many benefits that have been achieved by adopting the practices outlined in ISO 15189Plus including there has been a decrease in errors in many processes. Patient ID errors alone have been reduced by 50% and there has been a significant decrease in point-of-care nonconformance.

The OLA 15189Plus™ accreditation in addition to meeting the requirements of ISO 15189 also requires labs to meet a number of other rigorous requirements: the ISO 15190 standard on medical laboratory safety, the ISO 22870 standard for point-of-care testing and the Canadian Standards Association’s CSA-Z902 standard on blood safety. The Laboratory at WOHS had to ensure staff understood the accreditation process and requirements, and make sure that the resources required to meet accreditation requirements were available.

The William Osler Health System (WOHS) is one of Canada’s largest community hospital corporations serving the communities of Brampton, Etobicoke and surrounding areas in the Greater Toronto Area. WOHS hospitals include Etobicoke General, Brampton Civic and the soon-to-be redeveloped Peel Memorial. WOHS operates 773 in-patient beds and employs a team of more than 4,100 healthcare professionals. They serve a population of 1.3 million and its laboratories process over 100,000 specimens a month.