Hi
We had a special participants' feedback meeting (free of charge) last month when we debated these issues, and where virtually all of those present urged us to go completely paper free and no-one seemed particularly concerned about cost, only quality of service and ease of use.
[1] EQA is a professional knowledge-based service. What you pay for is the expertise and accumulated knowledge of the Organiser and managerial staff in designing schemes which probe and illuminate the state of the art of a particular field of laboratory medicine, and which provide the participant with independent and objective information they cannot obtain anywhere else.
[2] The cost of materials is high (getting on for £500 per litre for NBS serum) but even this is not a large proportion of costs compared to salaries and overheads. Neither is report printing and postage in relative terms, but both of these costs are unnecessary in today's electronic age. When we have groups of trainees round to learn about our work (we provide this service free of charge and take them out to lunch!) they are to a (wo)man appalled at the huge amount of paper we get through for just one distribution of the clinical chemistry scheme, and at the amount of (unnecessary) effort that goes into putting reports into envelopes, franking and posting them.
[3] We constantly emphasise to our participants that when they download report pdfs from our website (which should only take seconds if their computer systems have been dragged into the 21st century) they do NOT need to print all the pages. The ABC scores for each analyte will tell them if they have a problem and where to look in the structured report for the detailed sample bias. If they have Adobe Acrobat they can cut and paste summary information into their own applications for display and further analysis without printing. They can burn a CD (only 10p each) with all their report files for a whole year.
[4] We want to go paper free and a good proportion of our participants want this too. Indeed many have opted not to receive printed reports. It dramatically lowers our collective carbon footprint if everyone only prints what they really need to see, and we can put the time and effort into developing the participant interface and knowledge base.
[5] As for being taken for a ride, perhaps we should all examine just what good value EQA is relative to the cost of quality assurance as a whole. A lab with a total spend of say £4M will typically spend about £400K (ie 10%) of its budget on quality assurance (staff time, IQC materials, assay reagents, accreditation fees etc). If they are in most of the major EQA schemes, their EQA budget may be about £4K tops - that is 1% of their quality spend. (The global cost of EQA is small - a little while ago we calculated that the Government’s latest order for Apache helicopters would have paid for all of UK NEQAS for 1000 years!!) Get real please! Check out how much a year's EQA costs for Clinical Chemistry is in relation to what is spent on IQC material or on an instrument service contract or a meal for four in a good restaurant - anything you like!
[6] All UK NEQAS services are not-for-profit - we charge fees which we estimate will just cover the cost of the service, no more no less. Any small surpluses we make have to be very carefully hoarded to buy freezers, computers, pay for salary rises etc. Our department has 12 fte's - everyone who visits thinks this is ridiculously low for what we provide - overseas visitors are gob-smacked. We have to pay rental on our premises, full costs of heat, light, water, full costs for materials. We are all NHS employees with the same problems as you all have. Any small savings we make on going paper free will be put into employing more scientific staff, clever electronic systems which will make your lives a lot easier in the future, and providing a wider repertoire of innovative services (including POCT).
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David Bullock (Director)
Finlay MacKenzie & Jonathan Middle (Deputy Directors)
UK NEQAS Birmingham
0121 414 7300, fax 0121 414 1179
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-----Original Message-----
From: Clinical biochemistry discussion list on behalf of Janice Still
Sent: Thu 19/07/2007 16:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EQA reports and result entry
There is an increasing requirement from the EQA providers to enter results on-line and receive reports on-line. For some, printed paper reports are no longer available.This all takes some considerable time, which used to be the time of the EQA provider, and is now mine.Not to mention the quantity of paper and printer ink used to print off all these reports.These, and postage and packing, (not to mention staff time) were all costs previously borne by the EQA provider, and presumably costed in the annual EQA charge. I have the feeling that I am now doing all the work and I am certainly not seeing any reduction in the charges from the providers. Does anyone else have the sneaking feeling that they are being taken for a ride?
Mrs. J. Still,
POCT Manager,
Biochemistry Dept,
Watford General Hospital. 01923-217998.
The views expressed in this message are personal and do not reflect West Herts NHS Hospitals Trust policy.
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------ACB discussion List Information--------
This is an open discussion list for the academic and clinical
community working in clinical biochemistry.
Please note, archived messages are public and can be viewed
via the internet. Views expressed are those of the individual and
they are responsible for all message content.
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