ArticleAfrican journal of primary health care & family medicine2025
Assessing laboratory specimen losses for the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Article in African journal of primary health care & family medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Biophotonics point-of-care diagnostics in low-resource settings: a South African perspective.Journal of biomedical optics · 2026Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSpecimen losses across the pathology value chain (PVC) result in missed diagnostic opportunities. It is difficult to fully assess these due to the current paper-based systems, with tracking of specimens only possible on the laboratory information system (LIS).
aimThis study aimed to assess specimen losses using the paper-based register.
settingRandomly selected Primary health care (PHC) facilities, City of Johannesburg, South Africa.
methodsThe retrospective descriptive study design was used to scan 1,000 barcodes from facilities in sub-districts A to G. Data was limited to barcodes from the request form and excluded surveillance testing. Matching data from the laboratory repository was extracted. PVC losses were assessed by determining the percentage of scanned barcodes that had a registered, tested, reviewed and/or rejected date. The analysis was stratified according to sub-district, health facility type and test code.
resultsThe dataset analysed included 33 867 barcodes with 121 697 test codes, equating to 3.59 tests per barcode. Matching registered, tested and reviewed dates were detected for 33 107 (97.76%) barcodes. In total, a rejection for one or more test codes was detected for 1,961 barcodes (5.79%). At the sub-district level, between 95.95% (D) and 98.90% (E) of barcodes were reviewed. The rejection rate ranged from 3.27% (F) to 10.93% (D). For community health centres and clinics, 97.37% and 97.97% of the barcodes had a matching reviewed date.
conclusionPVC losses reported were 4.05%, excluding rejections (5.79%), with slightly higher levels noted at the sub-district level. Contribution: The continuous audit of PVC losses is recommended.
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