LAPLACE – River Parishes Hospital’s Mammography Department recently passed its annual Mammography Quality Standards Act Inspection with 100 percent compliance.

The MQSA was passed on Oct. 27, 1992, to establish national quality standards for mammography. The MQSA required that, to provide mammography services legally after Oct. 1, 1994, facilities must be accredited by an approved accreditation body and certified by the secretary of Health and Human Services. The authority to approve accreditation bodies and to certify facilities was delegated by the secretary to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In order to be granted certification, the facility must maintain records documenting initial and continuing qualifications of all personnel who have performed or are performing duties of interpreting physician, radiological technologist, or medical physicist and all employees assigned to quality assurance tasks for the facility. Additionally, the facility must undergo an inspection on equipment performance, Quality Assurance records, Quality Control records and tests, technologists tests, medical physicist’s annual survey reports, medical records summaries and medical audit and outcome analysis records.

“I would like to recognize and thank Dawn Reed, mammography supervisor, and Donna Roussel, a mammography technologist, for performing all necessary maintenance testing on our mammography equipment and maintaining continuing education records on our

mammography staff, ” said Radiology Director Ann LeBlanc. “I am proud to announce that we have five certified mammography techs at RPH, all of who live and work in the River Parishes. When our patients come in for their mammograms, they feel more comfortable having someone they know performing their test.”