The quintessence of quality in the clinical laboratory.

Providing quality service is the goal of laboratory managers. The quintessence of clinical laboratory quality is the provision of an appropriate service--either medical information or some other service--that can be shown to measurably satisfy a patient's medical need and can be tied to patient outcome. Traditional quality measures, such as laboratory inspections and proficiency testing surveys as used by CLIA'88, are not the optimal yardsticks to apply. More effective programs are needed, such as the CAP's Q-Probes, that link laboratory operations with documented desired patient outcome. Only when a laboratory can define quality in a way that allows it to be quantitatively assessed in terms of patient care can it really know if it is providing optimal service.