Abstract

UG GUEVARA, Grisel; RODRIGUEZ SOCARRAS, Isis Patricia; LEON RAMENTOL, Cira Cecilia  and  GREGORI CABALLERO, Alexis. External assessment of quality through accuracy in investigations in clinical laboratories. AMC [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.4, pp.359-370. ISSN 1025-0255.

Background: the use of the Program of External Quality Assessment (PEQA) for clinical laboratories is nowadays an indispensable requirement in its accreditation process. The acceptable participation and performance in these programs act as an improvement in the practice of clinical laboratories and instruct about the benefits and limitations of the analytic procedures. 4, 5 Objective: to demonstrate the usefulness of the assessment of accuracy to detect those laboratories that deviate average consensus, increases straying and cause false results in the evaluation. Method: a retrospective, longitudinal, descriptive, observational study was conducted to assess accuracy from 1999 to 2013. Samples from the 64 clinical laboratories in the province were processed; in parallel, values included in the level ± 3 standard deviations and rejected (which are out of the level) were considered “accepted” in the reference laboratory of the Coordinating Center of the PEQA. Results: accuracy improved in time in the laboratories in both levels of attention with the exception of the urate components and leukocyte overall count, that decreased due to difficulties with equipments, reagents or procedures. Conclusions: during the 14 years of the application of the program in the province, an average of a 74 % of accepted results has been obtained demonstrating that the system proposed is efficient and beneficial.

Keywords : QUALITY ASSURANCE, HEALTH CARE; LABORATORY RESEARCH; PROGRAMS; PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY SERVICES; OBSERVATIONAL STUDY.

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