Innovations, automations and technological advancements have changed the entire diagnostic landscape in past 30 years. However, in India, there is emerging an increasing cliff between the large national laboratories and the mid-sized locally servicing boutique laboratories. The bigger players have the financial muscle and the patient volume to afford better prices from customers and low costs from vendors and continue to stay profitable. But mid-sized laboratories fail to catch-up with these giants, be its quality, volumes or costs. Statistical analysis confirms that due to inadequate training and quality management, about 80 percent of 100,000 laboratory setups fail to meet the accreditation standards.

Dr. Jatinder Bhatia (Founder & Chairperson, 360 Diagnostic & Health Services Pvt. Ltd.), spent 30 years as a Consultant Pathologist, which included owning and running large diagnostic laboratories with the highest quality standards in the country. She also is a lead auditor for NABL. Dr. Bhatia felt the imperative need to educate the mid size labs on the changing global standards. She came-up with a unique intervention to plug the gap. She started 360 HELP Health Education & Learning Protocols in 2015 to implement quality management services and provide trainings to such labs to receive international accreditation.

Unique Services for Smoother Operations

To come of age, mid-sized and rural diagnostic centres require international standards and accreditations to survive and serve the customers better. 360 DHS is the first

private organization to conduct QCI certificate trainings on Quality in Healthcare. Under its 360-HELP program (NABET accredited, and NABL accepted), the company conducts short certified training for diagnostic centres, blood banks and hospitals, and helps them implement quality protocols and prepare for NABL/NABH certifications. 360 DHS even conducts training on quality control & infection control, apart from providing post-accreditation quality control and audits. It runs an accreditation consultancy to help clients get accredited by NABL/NABH. Clients can track live progress update through an online tracking tool.

The training period ranges from 1-4 days, depending on the purpose of training (four days on quality management system in medical labs (ISO 15189, NABL), three days on NABH Standards for Hospitals, two days on NABH standards for blood banks, and one day on quality assurance). Over the last four years, the company has successfully trained 200 batches, 5000 doctors and 25 medical schools. “We gather individual/small labs in batches to train them through 360-HELP. It’s more of training-on-demand,” adds Dr. Jatinder. 360 DHS even conducts special trainings on novel technologies (immunofluroscent, immunohistochemistry) to install cancer treatment protocols for the onco-genetics laboratories. The roster further includes marketing of high-end tests like genomics & onco-genomics to help labs achieve better ROI.

We gather individual/small labs in batches to train them through 360-HELP

Beyond Training

Going a step further, this full cycle solution provider’s consulting service named 360-HEALTH helps in project feasibility, pre-operative & master planning, commissioning, operations & management, accreditation of the facilities, healthcare transformation, people and organization, business development strategy, mergers & acquisitions, build operate transfer of labs/blood banks, lab outsourcing and public private partnership. 360-HEALTH has been increasingly advising boutique local labs as well as small-scale international laboratories through transformative decision making support. No wonder, 360 DHS was nominated for DL Shah Quality award by Quality Council of India in 2016.

360 DHS will further tackle present crisis of midlevel labs, and Dr. Jatinder envisions conglomerating these mid-sized laboratories (keeping the ownership intact) under a single umbrella and help them partner with each other. The company is planning to embark on the mission to boost its efficacy by developing customer friendly app and IT solutions. This new dream will give a new vision to the diagnostics to complete full circle of communication between patient, doctor and the labs by 2020.