Tools, Technologies and Training for Healthcare Laboratories

CAP rolls out the first practical IQCP guidelines

Posted by Sten Westgard, MSCAP-elligibility-IQCP

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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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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New Publication: Useful measures and models for quality

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Coming to Croatia: Zagreb's EFLM course

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Are there new (Erna Lenters-)"Westra Rules" for HbA1c?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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New Paper on MU, TE, and the unnecessary struggle

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Wanted: Data that's live

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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New Paper: Risk-Based QC Strategies with Six Sigma Nomograms

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Multisite Analysis of AST performance and goals

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

At the AACC/ASCLS conference in San Diego, many of the Sigma VP laboratories contributed to a poster on evaluating the applicability of various analytical performance specifications for AST:

Multisite study of AST analytical performance reveals disparities in global performance specifications

The full poster can be downloaded from our westgard.com download section here. (free membership required)

But what was most rewarding was meeting with many of the co-authors who came to the meeting.

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Ms Ginny Foo, Mr. Rajkumar Rengaraju, Co-authors from Innovative Diagnostics, Singapore

more pictures after the jump

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Sigma-metrics in Korea PT

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Q&A: 10 Questions on QC from the first webinar

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Budgets aren't the only things getting squeezed in the lab...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Setting specifications for setting specifications for...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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EFLM database: 78 steps forward, 272 steps back

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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AACC comments on Proposed New CLIA goals

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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NY Times Editorial Focuses on Failures in Medical Device Regulation

A recent New York Times Sunday editorial focused on the deplorable state of medical device regulation. We simply can no longer trust FDA clearances, particularly 510ks:

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Six Sigma Metrics ... Surging in China

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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Losing ground on HbA1c

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

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