Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
My esteemed colleague, good friend, and keen-eyed tracker of all things regulatory. Dr. Sharon Ehrmeyer, alerted me to a HUGE change in US regulations.
In April CMS sent out a memo title "Policy Clarification on Acceptable Control Materials Used when Quality Control (QC) is Performed in Laboratories"
This memo may contain as big a shift in regulatory policy as IQCP was to EQC. More, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Antwerp participants vote on meeting conculsions
As some of you know, the Quality in the Spotlight conference has one dinner that is infamous for its limerick contest. Finlay MacKenzie of the UK presides as the Master of Ceremonies, and all diners are invited to participate in constructing a limerick based on the events of the first day of the conference. Yes, that's right - try to turn statistics into lyrical poetry. A very difficult feat indeed.
And who was 2016's winner, you may ask?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
The news hasn't been getting any better over at Theranos. Since the Wall Street Journal pierced the facade on Theranos' promise of revolutionizing the lab test industry, there have been additional stories that Walgreens is seeking an exit from their partnership, that some of their premier clinical partners, Intermountain Healthcare and Cleveland Clinic, have not even started work on any validation studies with Theranos technologies, and that Capital BlueCross has put a stop to Theranos blood-drawing at the insurer's retail store in Pennsylvania.
But that's nothing compared the release of the full, but redacted, CMS inspection report of Theranos' Newark, California laboratory.
Earlier, we had seen the top sheet of the report, noting five major violations that meant Theranos was putting its patients in "immediate jeopardy."
The full report, more than 121 pages long, is as bad an inspection report as I have ever seen. More explanation of this, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
With sincere thanks to Carolyn Maurer, the Director of the CAP 15189 program.
As the new IQCP regulations kick in, it's been interesting to see the international reaction to them.
I admit that I thought the IQCP impact would be contained within the US, that contagion would not spread to the international community. After all, IQCP is only a required option for labs within the US, and then only required for labs that seek to find a replacement to their now-outdated EQC policies. For labs that don't want to reduce their QC frequency below once a day, there's no need to create an IQCP at all.
But the situation appears to be more complicated. CAP, which has a significant international presence, is rolling out IQCP to all of its members, not just its US customers.
In light of that, I asked CAP how it balances the IQCP reduced QC frequency with the ISO 15189 standards. Their answers, after the jump...
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