Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
We knew that the accreditation agencies needed to develop their own policies to handle the new CMS IQCP regulations. CAP gets the prize for being first out of the gate with some practical steps, as well retaining some safeguards for quality.
IQCP, if it's not already burned into your head, stands for Individualized Quality Control Plan, and this is supposed to be the replacement for the EQC policies which have been in place for several years. The EQC policies are being replaced, you may recall, because they are scientifically untenable. It was hoped that IQCP was going to be more scientifically robust. That remains to be seen. CAP is attempting to assure that it will implement the CMS IQCP regulations but also provide a higher level of quality assurance than that low bar.
More after the jump.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
A recent news investigation produced a litany of laboratory errors. Can you guess which of these lab errors actually happened?
a blood screening test fails to identify a critical blood disorder in a pregnant woman. Her child dies 3 weeks after being born
an HIV test falsely identifies a husband as HIV positive. The couple separates, the wife unwilling to trust the husband anymore.
a paternity test sample gets switched: a father is falsely told that his daughter is not his biological child. The family splits up. Nearly 4 years later, the laboratory contacts him and tells him he was the father. The father-daughter bond remains broken.
The answer, after the jump.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Last month, Advance for the Laboratory published a three part series on Six Sigma in the Clinical Laboratory, written by David Plaut, Nathalie Lepage, and Kim Przekop:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
While it's great that Advance has invested in in-depth coverage of the Six Sigma topic, unfortunately one of their examples in part 2 demonstrates a misunderstanding of the application.
See the mistake, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
A recent article about the experience of QMS tracking in a clinical laboratory in Nigeria raised some interesting questions about sources of errors in "developing world" laboratories.
Where would you expect a Nigerian Human Virology laboratory (HVL) to experience the most problems?
pre-analytical processes
analytical processes
post-analytical processes
The answer, after the jump...
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