Clinical Chemistry
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Clinical Chemistry 43: 1305, 1997;
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(Clinical Chemistry. 1997;43:1305.)
© 1997 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.

Editorials

The Errors of Our Ways

David Blumenthala

Health Policy Research and Development Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, 50 Staniford St., Boston, MA 02114 and, Department of Medicine and Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School
a Author and address for correspondence.

Two articles in this issue of Clinical Chemistry provide additional evidence of the potential benefits of applying modern quality theory to clinical medicine. Though understandably focused on laboratory process, these papers nevertheless suggest lessons that are widely applicable to reducing error rates and improving quality of care throughout medical practice.

The manuscripts complement each other nicely. Witte et al. (1) concentrate on rates of error within the analytical process of the laboratory, and find that widely discrepant values (>7 SD from expected) are relatively rare, occurring in 98 of 219 353 analyses they conducted. To compare error rates in the laboratory with error rates in other settings, they translate the figure 98 of 219 353 into a standard metric for error measurement: errors per million episodes (parts per million in industry jargon). Their data suggest an error rate of 447 ppm. They note, for example, that mishaps in anesthesia include 2.5 deaths per million cases, and aviation deaths are 0.18 per million passenger enplanements. Though . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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The following articles in journals at HighWire Press have cited this article:


Home page
 Ann Clin BiochemHome page
M. J O'Kane, P L M. Lynch, and N. McGowan
The development of a system for the reporting, classification and grading of quality failures in the clinical biochemistry laboratory
Ann Clin Biochem, March 1, 2008; 45(2): 129 - 134.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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 Clin. Chem.Home page
P. Bonini, M. Plebani, F. Ceriotti, and F. Rubboli
Errors in Laboratory Medicine
Clin. Chem., May 1, 2002; 48(5): 691 - 698.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Clin. Chem.Home page
D. Stockl, M. Plebani, P. Carraro, W. Hoelzel, A. Finke, and K. Miedema
Modern Quality Management Misunderstood? The authors of one of the articles referred to above reply:
Clin. Chem., May 1, 1998; 44(5): 1066 - 1067.
[Full Text] [PDF]


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Copyright © 1997 by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.