Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Now that the age of the IQCP is here, laboratories are grappling with the time and effort it takes to build their Individualized Quality Control Plans. How long should it take to build an appropriate IQCP?
- 40+ hours
- 21-40 hours
- 11-20 hours
- 5-10 hours
- Less than 5 hours?
How much time has it taken for you? How much time do you think it should take?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
An important new study was published in the International Journal of Laboratory Hematology, on the QC practices of coagulation laboratories.
But here's a question for you: of all these activities, how many of them occur greater than 90% of the time - and which one doesn't?
- Repeat the QC, and if it passes, report results
- Open [and run] new QC
- Look for trending
- Discontinue testing until controls are within limits
- Repeat all patient samples from the last acceptable QC
To find out which one of the activities occurs at a frequency not like the others, follow the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
An interesting abstract was published at the Paris IFCC meeting. It detailed the EQA performance of a set of 12 public laboratories in Catalonia. Can you guess what the failure rate for these labs for biochemistry EQA?
- 14.5%
- 14%
- 3%
- none of the above
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
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:
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
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Two interesting abstracts and papers concerning HbA1c came out recently. As laboratories switch from fasting blood glucose to HbA1c to diagnosis diabetes, the importance of the method performance of HbA1c methods is becoming critical.
But what's more important? Bias or CV?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS