Laboratory processes and equipment may have gaps or issues that can impact the overall quality, efficiency, and reliability of your testing results and general operations.
The CAP offers additional targeted programs and tools to help you improve performance and meet your quality goals and objectives.
Beyond proficiency testing, laboratories should employ a number of programs to assess, manage, and improve quality. Proper method validation, quality control testing, periodic calibration and instrument maintenance, employee competency testing, and laboratory inspection and accreditation provide important tools for measuring laboratory performance and ensuring quality.
Raouf E. Nakhleh, MD, FCAP Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, USA
Monitor and Compare Instrument Performance
Our Calibration Verification/Linearity* (CVL) programs provide a two-part assessment that allows you to identify instrument calibration issues or instrument performance changes across the analytical measurement range. We offer programs covering multiple disciplines and provide you with a customized report package that includes a statistical analysis of your results.
Our Quality Cross Check (QCC) programs allow you to monitor all the instruments in your laboratory on a routine basis and test for comparability between instruments and/or multiple locations for testing the same analyte. The customized reports include both instrument and peer group comparisons.
*Note: Our CVL programs satisfy the requirements for scheduled calibration verification and verification of the analytical measurement range as specified in the CAP Laboratory Accreditation Program manual.
Establish Realistic Benchmarks for Your Performance Goals
Enhance your contribution to the quality of care, patient safety, and outcomes by improving data collection and analysis, measuring quality, and tracking key performance indicators with the CAP’s Quality Management Tools (QMT). These programs can help you improve your processes and work efficiencies and establish realistic benchmarks by comparing your laboratory to similar laboratories.
Our peer-reviewed journal articles, published in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, are based on our QMT studies and include prior results of these programs. You can download previous studies to use as benchmarks for your laboratory.
Measure and Develop Staff
Competency is the personnel’s ability to apply their skill, knowledge, and experience to perform their laboratory duties correctly. Your laboratory can use our online comprehensive, customizable Competency Assessment program to assess and document personnel competency—an area that frequently makes our accreditation top-10 deficiency list. We have 130+ instrument-specific checklists as well as dozens of courses that offer staff continuing education credit.
Note: This program is currently available only in English.
