External quality assurance experience with Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Program at an academic hospital in South Africa.

INTRODUCTION

Laboratories use their performance in external quality assurance (EQA) to establish quality planning strategies and to assess whether testing processes require improvement.

METHODS

The EQA performance of the hematology and coagulation test parameters on the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia EQA program was evaluated over a 4-year cycle at an academic hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. The test performance was determined from analytical quality specification (APS) and/or z-scores. Bias and imprecision were used to calculate sigma (σ) metric scores. Specifications from European Federation of Laboratory Medicine and/or biological variation were applied.

RESULTS

The laboratory achieved a mean testing score of 98.7 ± 4.0%. There were 103 (10.7%) unacceptable results. On investigation, root causes included: presurvey issues (83%), transcription errors (9%), random errors (6%), and test performance errors (3%). All test parameters evaluated achieved an acceptable median APS during the study period. The mean z-scores, however, were >2 and unacceptable for mean cell hemoglobin concentration and hematocrit. On investigation, this was attributed to significant delay in transport and storage of full blood count samples. White cell count and d-dimer achieved a σ ≥ 6.

CONCLUSION

EQA participation assisted the laboratory in maintaining a quality system. Close monitoring is necessary for international laboratories to avoid sample delays that can affect result quality.