Under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act of 1967 the Health Care Financing Administration's proficiency-testing requirement applies to approximately 12,000 hospital, reference, and large-clinic laboratories in the United States. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene is approved by the Health Care Financing Administration to provide proficiency testing in all specialties and subspecialt...

These suggestions are as follows: 1) Regular use of certified reference materials and/or internal quality control using secondary reference materials 2) Participation in interlaboratory comparison or proficiency testing programs 3) Replicate tests or calibrations using the same or different methods 4) Retesting or recalibration of retained items 5) Correlation of results for different character...

− The Accredited Laboratories at their Certificate have described its best measurement capabilities (BMCs) for the more or less routine calibrations. This BMCs were usually evaluated by interlaboratory comparisons (ILCs), the proficiency testing (PT) schemes as described by the ISO Guide 43. The NMIs traditionally organize the ILCs for the NABs providing the travelling standards, the reference(...

BACKGROUND The objective of external quality assessment is to evaluate clinical acceptability of laboratory results. It is desirable to evaluate intermethod harmonization and traceability to a reference system. METHODS Conventional matrix-modified processed materials are used in most programs, because they can be produced in large quantities, can have multiple abnormal analytes in the same vi...

OBJECTIVE To measure the impact of an objective evaluation of provider Spanish-language skills on self-reported language proficiency and comfort using Spanish in a range of clinical scenarios. METHODS We enrolled pediatric residents with any self-reported Spanish language ability from 3 residency programs. Participants completed a baseline survey, objective language testing, and a posttest su...

Proficiency testing (PT) schemes seek to improve and maintain consistency in asbestos fibre counting by circulating mounted samples to laboratories, which return counts for comparison with consensus reference values. This study compares the level of these consensus values in three (Spanish, Belgian and UK) national PT schemes. It also assesses the effect of the imminent change in the European s...