Seeking Laboratory Best Practices

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Paul Epner, who helped start the Labs are Vital initiative, asked us to put out the word for him on an important issue.

Paul is working on a project with Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle) to identify evidence-based "best practices" in laboratory medicine, particularly in these three areas:

• Reducing patient specimen identification errors
• Timely, accurate communication of critical laboratory test results
• Preventing blood culture contamination

If you have unpublished studies, or in-house data on these topics, we encourage you to contact Paul Epner: PEPner at chicagobooth dot edu (I'm spelling the email address here to cut down on Spam to Paul's account). Paul and Batelle are actively seeking new participants in this project. You can find out more at the http://www.futurelabmedicine.org

Battelle does this work as a subcontractor for the CDC, so this is important work and these results will be widely disseminated.

Best Practices for the Laboratory are also Vital.