Queensland Health Pathology Service Statewide Coagulation Quality Control Database: the First Three Years Experience

Abstract number: P0689

Perrin¹ E, Solano² C, Yates² P, Just³ S, Ray¹ M, Ghent⁴ T, McCutchan⁵ A

¹¹Queensland Health Pathology Service (QHPS), The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, Australia ¹¹Queensland Health Pathology Service (QHPS), The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, Australia ²²QHPS, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia ³³QHPS, Royal Brisbane Hospital, Brisbane, Australia ⁴⁴QHPS, Gold Coast Hospital, Southport, Australia ⁵⁵QHPS, Townsville General Hospital, Townsville, Australia

Queensland Health Pathology Service (QHPS) is the principle provider of public sector pathology services in the state of Queensland, Australia providing clinical diagnostic services to more than 200 health care facilities. QHPS is composed of a hierarchical, networked system of 33 laboratories with a single laboratory information system. QHPS is the only fully integrated Statewide pathology service in Australia. Our objective was to implement a process to monitor coagulation quality control (QC) performed in 33 QHPS laboratories. While all QHPS laboratories use the same reagents and QC materials, 5 different types of analyser are used throughout the State. Each month, coagulation QC data (up to six parameters) is obtained from the QHPS computer system QC files and entered into a specially designed Microsoft Access database. Several statistical evaluation report formats have been configured. The test overview report sorts data according to QC lot to calculate a monthly mean, standard deviation (SD), coefficient of variation (CV) and standard deviation index (SDI) for each participant in each group. The SDI provides a measure for individual laboratory results indicating that they are within or outside the 2SD range for the group. Any outliers are included in an additional SDI report which provides details of QC lot, reagent lot and all previous SDIs for that level of QC material listed for that particular laboratory. These reports are circulated to all laboratories and provide an excellent statewide QC summary as well as comparison of different analysers and reagent lot numbers with the same QC material. The database has become an excellent quality tool which provides a complete chronological QC record for all QHPS laboratories. This process facilitates timely troubleshooting due to the speed with which the data is analysed and the reports distributed and may alert to problems that otherwise may go undetected.