Journal Watch - Westgard QC - Blog - Page 3 - Results from #40

Tools, Technologies and Training for Healthcare Laboratories

New publication: PT/EQA on Sigma Scale

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Pop Quiz: what's the EQA failure rate of laboratories?

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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The Real Rili-BAEK: an official English Translation

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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A Six Sigma Series from Advance

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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Biologic Variation Terminology: I before G, except separate from A

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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HbA1c: Bias is a big deal, and CV is critical

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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Pop Quiz: How good (bad) are Swedish hospitals at inflicting adverse harm?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

While we recently got a study that estimated the (frightenly high) number of Adverse Events caused by US hospitals, it looks like other countries are not content to let us stand alone. Now Sweden is doing us one better. Guess what the Adverse Event rate is in one hospital in Sweden?

  • 28.2%
  • 20.5%
  • 6.3%
  • 3.32%

 Which number would you choose?

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Journal alert: Sigma-metrics in CCLM

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Is it [LowQC]?: Farsi Addition

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Westgard in the News: Shaking up QC Frequency

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Pop Quiz: How many equations are needed (at minimum) to calculate measurement uncertainty?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

In Biochemia Medica, a recent article detailed the Minimum requirements for the estimation of measurement uncertainty:Recommendations of the joint Working group for uncertainty of measurement of the CSMBLM and CCMB.

Can you guess how many?

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Comparing MU to Ricos Desirable CV: Like comparing an apple to basketball

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

I was looking over a recent study of a compact blood gas analyzer conducted over multiple sites, multiple cartridges, multiple days, etc. In other words, this was a study that was doing a very thorough job.

Then I reached a section where suddenly it all fell to nonsense: measurement uncertainty.

So they calculated measurement uncertainty, but then they compared the results against Ricos desirable imprecision performance specifications.

Huh?

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New Paper on MU, TE, and the unnecessary struggle

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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How the "Westgard Rules" got their name...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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New Paper on Six Sigma models and math

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Are performance specifications based on biological variation for hemostatis unfit-for-purpose?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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A dearth of data in published papers

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Six Sigma for Agriculture and Textile Chemical?

Like many authors, I keep track of where I'm cited. So I was a bit surprised to see I had been referenced in a paper in the Agricultural Association of Textile Chemical and Critical Reviews Journal: https://doi.org/10.21276/AATCCReview.2026.14.03.22 Not the usual journal I expect. But even more curious, the title of the paper is "An overview of qua...

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