(NAHQ: Gleview, Illinois) -- To improve the safety of laboratory medicine, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed six preferred practices for measuring and reporting patient safety and communication in laboratory medicine. The preferred practices focus specifically on improving quality within pre- and postanalytic diagnostic services and address laboratory leadership, patient specimen identification, sample acceptability, test order accuracy, verbal communication, and critical value and result reporting.

For most patients, the clinical laboratory is an integral part of care. Laboratory charges occur for virtually all hospital admissions, and laboratory medicine affects nearly all patient care in all clinical settings. In addition, the results of lab analyses are an essential component of informed decision making. Many care decisions are based directly on information gleaned from laboratory results.

The pre- and postanalytic phases of laboratory testing are especially critical points upon which to focus patient safety improvements. Evidence indicates that errors occur in those windows at an uncommonly high rate, with preanalytic error rates as high as 75 percent and postanalytic error rates as high as 31 percent. These errors pose a direct threat to patient safety and to consumers’ confidence in the health care system. For example, improper patient identification can lead to misdiagnosis or wrong treatment.

Previous successful quality improvement efforts have focused on the analytic phases of laboratory testing, but past efforts at quality improvement have focused less on the time directly before testing (preanalytic) and after testing (postanalytic).

If significant improvements are to occur in patient safety and communication processes, NQF recognizes that a more standardized approach for test orders and critical value and result reporting must be adopted. The six preferred practices in Preferred Practices for Measuring and Reporting Patient Safety and Communication in Laboratory Medicine focus on communication and information transfer during the pre- and postanalytic stages of testing, and especially on practices that use information technology and address the interface between laboratory information systems and information systems used in other care settings. Implementation of these practices can improve patient safety and communication processes.

For more information, visit www.qualityforum.org, or www.nahq.org.