What's New: August 2015

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

IQC... The P stands for?

Pardon our political incorrectness: at the 2015 AACC/ASCLS conference, there were about as many different presentations on IQCP as there are GOP presidential candidates. With about the same amount of coherence. As US labs near the IQCP deadline, confusion is mounting, not consensus. (If you need to develop an IQCP and this isn't worrying you, you're not paying attention.)

Is it time to panic? Or time to proactively plan?

 

Break all the Rules, Part One: Answers

Last month we took a look at one control and a series of values that were designed to break almost all the "Westgard Rules." Here are the answers and your opportunity to compare your findings with our results.

When you have values from just one control, what rules can't be broken?
 

When the POC and lab don't agree

When a point-of-care device is compared to a core laboratory analyzer, we assume the core laboratory analyzer is always "right". But what if we can't tell whether either the point-of-care method or the core lab method is correct? When methodology is not the same, how do you handle the differences and bias between devices?

Between the core lab and POC, who do you decide is "right"?