The CAP General Checklist identifies specific elements subject to review during an inspection. Specifically, Gen.13806 indicates that there must be a documented program to ensure quality throughout the pre-analytic, analytic, and post-analytic phase of testing.
Scenario: You are the quality assurance officer for your laboratory, which is due for a laboratory accreditation on-site review within the next 90 days. In preparation for this review, you will need to check your quality assurance processes around the pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical procedures within your laboratory.
Answer EACH item below:
1. Describe a process that will ensure the laboratory will issue an accurate result on the correct patient in a timely manner for a Basic Metabolic Panel (BMP) test order.
Things to think about include any pre-analytical processes in place to assure timely collection on the correct patient.
2. Describe a secondary crosscheck process in place during verification of results to catch any errors if the initial process of accurate patient identification is not followed.
Things to think about in your process include any analytical or post-analytical factors involved in testing, reporting, and transmission of accurate data on the correct patient in a timely manner.
3. If an analytical error still occurred due to misidentification of a patient, list a corrective action measure that you could put into place in your laboratory to ensure that this error is not repeated on future patients.
