Laboratory Industry Report

In a recent study analyzing 590 event reports in physician offices (POLs), there were almost 1,000 testing errors, with almost 25 percent of these errors relating to reporting results to clinicians. Almost 13 percent of the 966 testing processing errors involved test ordering, while almost 18 percent were related to implementing the testing, including not performing the test at all, which was noted 6.7 percent in the study published in a recent issue of Quality and Safety in Health Care (2008;17;194-200).