Sponsored by The Karen Hospital
By Evans Ongwae
The Kenya National Accreditation Service (Kenas) has accredited The Karen Hospital’s medical laboratory for the ISO 15189 standard. This sets the lab on a growth path as the hospital’s co-founder, Dr Betty Gikonyo, envisioned.
The paediatric cardiologist established a small lab at the Heart-to-Heart Foundation in Upper Hill more than two decades ago. Later, when the hospital opened its doors in 2006, it had a lab that gave way to the one that Kenas accredited late last month.
Hospital Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Juliet Nyaga, says the accreditation is key to the realisation of Dr Gikonyo’s dream. “She wanted to see the lab grow,” Mrs Nyaga notes, saying that the accredited facility is now able to serve many more people on account of its new status.
The accreditation journey, she says, was a vigorous process that required the hospital “to put in a lot of investments and effort.” The facility, she explains, meets not just the Kenya Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists Board (KMLTTB) standards, but global ones too, since ISO 15189 is international.
Mrs Nyaga adds that to attain its new status, the lab had to be refurbished and modernised. The old facility that had served the hospital since inception was therefore temporarily moved from the Ground Floor to Third Floor, to pave the way for the necessary improvements, before moved back to the modern, better equipped and expanded space.
Dr Belgrad Kenne, the hospital’s deputy CEO, elaborates that in the run up to the accreditation, the lab was expanded, its equipment upgraded, and more personnel added. “This has been a longstanding objective of the hospital,” he says.
Dr Kenne further explains: “As a Tier 1 hospital, The Karen Hospital considers quality and safety the bedrock of our operations. Standardising all our processes under the ISO 15189 framework ensures we meet this objective.”
Mrs Nyaga says the accreditation is a big milestone because it impacts clinical outcomes for patients. “This means faster turnaround times for medical samples delivered to the lab, and greater accuracy and precision of the results,” she says. Her deputy adds that even the doctors from other hospitals who order for tests to be conducted at the lab are assured of this accuracy.
Mrs Nyaga urges hospitals that lack such a lab to send their samples to the hospital for testing. “We are accredited to international standards and you can be sure the accuracy and precision of our lab can make a difference in how you manage your patients,” she assures them.
The Karen Hospital’s CEO says the institution plans to expand the number of its satellite branches from the current nine to 25 by December 2025. The idea, she explains, is to make its world-class laboratory accessible to as many Kenyans as possible.
Dr Kenne explains that indeed, the lab’s high-end diagnosis services are open to other healthcare facilities in the country. “The cutting-edge infrastructure, the high calibre manpower and the world-class equipment we have at the lab make The Karen Hospital one of the leaders in healthcare in the country,” he says.
He adds that the accreditation is not the end of the lab’s quality and safety journey, “because we will continue complying with the standards, as well as tracking our compliance and benchmarking with other hospitals so as to increase client satisfaction.”
More information about the facility is available in this downloadable PDF.
eongwae@ke.nationmedia.com
*The Karen Hospital is ISO 9001:2015 certified.
