October 8, 2008 Joint Commission
and CAP Meeting Follow-Up

The Next Meeting is April 1, 2009 - No fooling!!!

The next Tr-State general meeting is scheduled for Wednesday April 1, 2009 at the DoubleTree Hotel. Although this meeting does not include a vendor fair we will be looking for speakers. Some of the suggested topics from our group include: Lean, any new trends in POCT, Developing a Computer based learning System for POCT, conducting correlation studies between POC and Lab, HIV testing, billing, streamline P/P for POCT and the POC Specialist Program and/or CE for the POCC to name a few. Vendors, please contact Joanne McEldowney at Mceldown@UIC.EDU if you would like to provide/sponsor a speaker.

To follow questions were not answered at the meeting:

Terry Guimon MT(ASCP), Technical Specialist, and Dottie Hautman, MT(ASCP) SC, Inspection Specialist; Laboratory Accreditation Program, College of American Pathologists respond:

Question 1: Do I need to fax the attestation sheet with my proficiency results?

No, this is for the protection of your laboratory.

Question 2: Do I need to follow the vendor’s recommendation to do follow up testing for negative results on the waived influenza (or strep) test kit?

The microbiology resource committee has recently discussed this issue for pediatric patients and has decided that, at this time, the follow up cultures are NOT a requirement but are definitely good practice and should be strongly encouraged.

In addition, Dottie wanted to clarify a comment that may have been confusing to the group.

Regarding slide 50 about documenting the read back for verbally communicating criticals by phone: She said that this was not needed if there is no communication by phone. But there still must be documentation that the critical was given to the appropriate caregiver. There would just be no read back since it would be handed to them and not given by phone.