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
A recent question came in from a technical support consultant for a major diagnostic manufacturer:
"It is for Free T4 analyte. Customer [has] establihed a QC range after 20 QC runs. Mean and SD were derived from 20 runs and %CV achieved from 20 runs is 1.2%. Allowable interassay precision criteria according to CLIA is 6%.
"Now when customer [applies] Mean and SD according to the established range many...times they face QC rules violations of 41s and 10x.
"So can you please suggest, when the SD is too narrow is it necessary to apply these two rules to immunoassays?"
What's your guess? I'll take a stab at an answer, after the jump.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
I came across a very valuable paper in Clinica Chimica Acta on the stability of hematology controls for MCV. (Some of you are already guessing what this is going to be about...)
If you take a hematology control, how many SDs should you expect to see it shift at week 5 of use versus the first week of use? In other words, what is the SDI you should expect?
- 1 SDI
- 2 SDI
- 3 SDI
- 4 SDI
- 5 SDI
- higher than 5 SDI
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Diagnostic errors are one of the "new" hot topics in the healthcare field. A new study from British Medical Journal of Quality and Safety has a chilling estimate of just how common diagnostic errors are occurring in outpatient settings.
So what's your guess? How often in the US are diagnostic errors being made in outpatient settings?
- about 1 in 5 visits
- about 1 in 10 visits
- about 1 in 20 visits
- about 1 in 50 visits
- about 1 in 100 visits
The study's conclusion, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Earlier this month (July) I came across a series of revealing posts on a listserv about the quality of glucose meters. For me, it raised the question, just what defect rate is acceptable at the point of care?
- 0.00034%
- 1%
- 5%
- 10%
- 40%
- 75%
- 100%
What level of defect rate do you believe is being seen at the point of care? the answer (after the jump) might astonish you...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
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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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
We've all heard the infamous quote now over a decade and a half old: that US hospitals kill between roughly 40,000 and 90,000 patients each year. This was an estimate courtesy of the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human" which made the dire performance of hospitals knowledge that even the general public could understand.
But more recently, studies have been tracking the adverse event rates much more closely. A recent NEJM paper followed four conditions from 2005 to 2011.
Of these four conditions, which do you think has the best Sigma performance when it comes to the occurrence of adverse events?
A. Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)
B. Congestive Heart Failure
C. Pneumonia
D. (other) Conditions Requiring Surgery
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS