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Mountain Healthcare has become the first Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) in the UK to achieve accreditation from The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) to ISO 15189:2022, the international medical laboratories standard.
This accreditation represents the formal recognition of the quality and competence of forensic medical examinations undertaken at Mountain Healthcare’s Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire SARCs. It encompasses a range of SARC services including patient preparation and examination, the collection, transportation, protection and storage of samples, as well as the subsequent interpretation and reporting of results; all within overarching safety and ethical considerations.
The granting of the first UKAS accreditation to a SARC service provider marks the successful culmination of a multi-year development project, reflecting the considerable commitment of a wide range of dedicated sector stakeholders to meet the specialist needs of both patients and clinicians. Explaining the significance of the award, Angela Shaw, Director of Forensics at UKAS said: “UKAS accreditation provides assurance to some of the most vulnerable members of our society by underpinning confidence in the competence and integrity of the services they are receiving. This now applies throughout this very sensitive area of the criminal justice system; from the initial specialist patient care and collection of evidence at SARCs, right the way through to longer-term well-being support from accredited organisations such as The Survivors Trust.”
The Forensic Science Regulator (FSR) has stipulated that all SARC service providers must achieve UKAS accreditation for the forensic examination process, with several SARCs currently in the latter stages of the accreditation assessment process. To give SARCs guidance on the requirements of both ISO 15189 and the FSR’s Code of Practice, UKAS implemented an assisted application process and continues to run series of workshops.