Urinalysis QC

[mia9941]

I have worked in several labs all of which are or were accredited by different agencies- one was CAP, one was COLA, one was CLIA, ANd one JACHO. There seems to be a variety of interpretations on daily Urinalysis QC. At my present job, we are accredited with JCAHO and we perform QC on the Clinitek Advantus three times every day and it has to be performed at exact times (8 AM, 4PM and Midnight +/- 15 minutes. This seems to be overkill to me, but I am not certain what the regs are (not a supervisor). Can anyone shed some light on this matter. Thanks.

mia

[SMILLER]

We had an experience with this regarding QC for our coag analyzers a few inspections ago. We are a JACHO certified Lab. We were cited for not running QC every 8 hours for Coag. We ran them 3 times a day, but not exactly at 8 hours. There were a few 6 and 9 or 10 hour gaps. The regs just say every 8 hours. The inspector said they should be within 1/2 hour of every 8 to be in compliance. We did not argue the point.

Not sure what the regs say about automated UA analyzers, but if they or the manufacturer say every 8, i think you need to try to get people to run them as close as possible to that.

[lalamb]

we also got sited for the hemo and coag QC. They are now run every 8 hr, +/- 15 minutes. Our automated UA QC is just once every 24 hours. ?maybe cuz its simpler technology?

[PAWHITTECAR]

I know that whole blood testing has to be every 8 hours but serum and urine testing is every 24 hours per CAP,CLIA and most of the alphabet soup.

[clmergen]

We run QC on the "dipstick" part of our analyzer (Clinitek Atlas) once per day but on the Microscopic (UF100) 3 times per day as it is a laser and cell counter just like a hematology analyzer. Actually since we had problems hitting the 8 hours + 15 minutes, we went to running 4 times per day. So we QC our analyzers (including Abbott Architect electrolytes, recommended every 8 hours) at 0300, 0900, 1500, and 2100.