Health Department mandates 24-hour central labs in district hospitals

The Health Department has issued new guidelines to implement 24-hour central laboratory services across all district hospitals. This initiative aims to modernize medical services and reduce patient suffering by ensuring advanced testing, such as bacteriology and histopathology, is available around the clock.

A key component of this reform is the transition to 100 percent online reporting and SMS services, which must be fully operational by November 30. This system will allow test results to be sent directly to a patient’s mobile number and the computer systems of their treating medical unit, eliminating the need for patients to return to the hospital solely to collect manual reports.

To improve efficiency, the department is introducing a ‘single central clinical laboratory’ and a ‘single prick policy.’ Under these rules, technicians working in pathology, blood banks, and Integrated Counseling and Testing Centers (ICTC) will operate under the unified administrative control of the hospital superintendent and the supervision of relevant specialists. The department also mandated a three-tier verification process—technical processing, section verification, and lab specialist validation—to ensure the accuracy of all released reports.