Materia Medica Malaysiana

Dialysis centres to be audited to ensure quality of service

KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry will start conducting audits on dialysis centres mushrooming in the country to ensure the quality of their services.
Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said the technical and medical audit checks were part of the measures being considered by a new committee set up to ensure that the over 300 such centres in the country maintained the highest standards of dialysis care.
“Our officials have already conducted inspections on three dialysis centres in Sri Manjung and one in Seremban this month and found several deficiencies, although they complied with most of the requirements under the ministry’s guidelines,” he said at the 3rd Annual Dialysis Meeting on Nutrition in End Stage Renal Disease here yesterday.
The deficiencies included inadequate floor space for patients undergoing dialysis, the required three-monthly blood screen on patients with HIV and hepatitis not being done and lack of emergency trolleys and treatment rooms on each floor to cater for emergencies.
“Specific machines for the use of HIV, hepatitis and infectious patients were also not set aside on the excuse that there are no such patients under treatment,” Dr Chua added.
The audit, based on the ministry’s “Guidelines on Standards for Haemodialysis Treatment” would cover the centres’ physical facilities and equipment, professional staffing, monitoring of dialysis patients, adequacy of haemodialysis treatment and cross-infection control measures, among others.
He said it was important for dialysis centres to provide proper rehabilitation, including nutritional considerations, as patients could return to gainful employment and to normal and gratifying lifestyles.
He said the National Renal Registry recorded 316 dialysis centres last year of which 112 were Government-owned, 91 were run by non-governmental organisations and the remaining by the private sector.
Meanwhile, Dr Chua said a state-of-the-art scanner that enables early detection of cancer will be available next week at the Penang Hospital Nuclear Medicine Services Unit.
The hospital will be the first hospital in the country to be equipped with a PET-CT (positron emission tomography – computed tomography) scanner.
PET-CT scan is a sophisticated diagnostic technique using radioactive material or isotopes that have a short lifespan which transmits very low radiation effects.
“It is able to detect diseases especially growth or cancers at an early stage, even before there is any structural changes in the cells,” he said.