Press Releases

James A. Thomas to Serve on NCCLS/Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Board of Directors

Dr. Thomas L. Hearn, NCCLS President, has appointed James A. Thomas to the NCCLS/Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Board of Directors. Mr. Thomas was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the Board which concludes at the 2005 Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Leadership Conference. At that time, he will be eligible for nomination to a full three-year term on the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Board of Directors.

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NCCLS Announces Availability of New Guideline on Continuous Quality Improvement: Integrating Five Key Quality System Components

Every clinical service needs ongoing quality improvement. The practicing of continuous quality improvement (CQI) maximizes operational efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability.  These managerial goals are especially important since: national and local governments and peer organizations continue to scrutinize the management of quality in the process of licensing and accrediting clinical services of all sizes; demands of managed health care in a constrained economy compel clinical services to handle more volume with fewer resources; and changing trends in illness, medical practice, and demographics call for clinical services to adapt and meet new customer needs.  Consequently, a clinical service should focus on systematic continuous quality improvement as measured by customer satisfaction, including profitability.

NCCLS document, Continuous Quality Improvement: Integrating Five Key Quality System Components; Approved Guideline—Second Edition (GP22-A2), presents such managerial skills and outlines the importance of the synergistic combination of Quality Planning, Quality Teamwork, Quality Monitoring, Quality Improvement, and Quality Review—all functioning within the whole integrated quality system.  This document presents general managerial concepts that apply to any kind of clinical service.

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NCCLS Announces Availability of New Guideline on Application of a Quality Management System Model for Laboratory Services; Approved Guideline—Third Edition

“Medical error” has been ascribed to a “failure of process.” Therefore, the clinical laboratory’s best contribution to preventing any medical error for which it could be responsible is to understand the processes in its path of workflow, and improve processes where problems exist.

NCCLS document, Application of a Quality Management System Model for Laboratory Services; Approved Guideline—Third Edition (GP26-A3), introduces the clinical laboratory’s path of workflow—that is, the processes that transform a request for a clinical laboratory service (i.e., a laboratory that performs screening, diagnostic, or monitoring examinations for patient care) through obtaining and transporting the sample, performing the examination, interpreting the results, and providing the patient’s laboratory examination report.

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NCCLS Announces Availability of New Guideline on Procedures for the Handling and Processing of Blood Specimens; Approved Guideline—Third Edition

Has the improper handling of blood specimens ever led to an error in your lab? NCCLS has a solution to reduce your risks. This document provides guidelines to prepare an optimal serum or plasma sample to reduce systematic bias that can occur after specimen collection.  Implementation of these recommended procedures will assist laboratories in the pursuit of excellent performance, with useful, accurate patient test results as the ultimate goal.

NCCLS document, Procedures for the Handling and Processing of Blood Specimens; Approved Guideline—Third Edition (H18-A3), addresses handling and processing of blood specimens for analytical determinations using serum, plasma, or whole blood in the clinical laboratory.  Where applicable, the recommendations should be considered by the following laboratory areas: chemistry, coagulation, hematology, immunology, ligand assay, serology, toxicology/therapeutic drug monitoring, virology, blood bank, and molecular or DNA analysis.

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NCCLS Announces Availability of New Guideline on A Quality Management System Model for Health Care; Approved Guideline—Second Edition

Quality is one of the most challenging issues in healthcare today. The system is ever-increasingly complex. Costs are skyrocketing. Errors are widespread. Better care and assurance of patient safety is demanded.

Quality management systems, similar to those being used successfully in the world’s manufacturing and service sectors, can be applied to benefit healthcare organizations and services to improve patient safety. Uniform processes and procedures for implementing the quality policies within the organization reduce medical errors and reduce opportunities for costly discrepancies, conflicts, and competition for limited resources among the organization’s services.

NCCLS has developed A Quality Management System Model for Health Care; Approved Guideline—Second Edition (HS1-A2), which provides the necessary background information and infrastructure to develop a quality management system that will meet healthcare quality objectives and be consistent with the quality objectives of each organization or service.

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Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), formerly NCCLS, Announces Availability of New Standard for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing

The supplemental information presented in this document, Performance Standards for Antimicrobial susceptibility Testing; Fifteenth Informational Supplement (M100-S15), is intended for use with the antimicrobial susceptibility testing procedures published in the following Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), formerly NCCLS, approved standards: Performance Standards for Antimicrobial Disk Susceptibility Tests; Approved Standard—Eighth Edition,(M2-A8), and Methods for Dilution Antimicrobial Susceptibility Tests for Bacteria That Grow Aerobically; Approved Standard—Sixth Edition,(M7-A6).  The standards contain information about both disk (M2) and dilution (M7) test procedures for aerobic bacteria.

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View the complete listing of NCCLS press releases.

Read about recently approved document, Fluorescence Calibration and Quantitative Measurement of Fluorescence Intensity (I/LA 24-A), as published in the 1 November 2004 issue of Analytical Chemistry.

Daniel W. Tholen, MS, NCCLS volunteer, wrote a letter to the Archives of Pathology, regarding NCCLS document, Evaluation of Linearity in the Clinical Laboratory (EP6-A). Read the published letter, along with a reply from the authors.

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