Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

A recent article about the experience of QMS tracking in a clinical laboratory in Nigeria raised some interesting questions about sources of errors in "developing world" laboratories.

Where would you expect a Nigerian Human Virology laboratory (HVL) to experience the most problems?

• pre-analytical processes
• analytical processes
• post-analytical processes

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

A recent news investigation produced a litany of laboratory errors. Can you guess which of these lab errors actually happened?

• a blood screening test fails to identify a critical blood disorder in a pregnant woman. Her child dies 3 weeks after being born
• an HIV test falsely identifies a husband as HIV positive. The couple separates, the wife unwilling to trust the husband anymore.
• a paternity test sample gets switched: a father is falsely told that his daughter is not his biological child. The family splits up. Nearly 4 years later, the laboratory contacts him and tells him he was the father. The father-daughter bond remains broken.

The answer, after the jump.

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

As some of you know, this year's new "Westgard Wear" novelty was not a piece of clothing, nor a Bobblehead, but instead an 8GB USB thumb drive:

But if you look at this picture of two of the thumb drives, is there anything that jumps out at you?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

An interesting abstract was published at the Paris IFCC meeting. It detailed the EQA performance of a set of 12 public laboratories in Catalonia. Can you guess what the failure rate for these labs for biochemistry EQA?

• 14.5%
• 14%
• 3%
• none of the above

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Can you guess just how bad US healthcare is at making the right diagnosis?

Is the error rate in the US related to diagnosis

• 5%?
• 10%?
• 6 to 17%?
• all of the above?

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

The IATA (International Air Transport Association), whose 260 member airlines comprise 83% of global air travel, released their statistics on 2015 airline safety.

Can you guess how safe it is to travel? What was the global jet accident rate?

• 0.32 per million flights
• 0.22 per million flights
• 0.12 per million flights
• 0 per million flights

The answer, after the jump...

A recent New York Times Sunday editorial focused on the deplorable state of medical device regulation. We simply can no longer trust FDA clearances, particularly 510ks:

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

The third year of Medicare penalties has been meted out. This year hospitals were penalized for avoidable complications such as various types of infections, blood clots, bed sores, falls, and new to the list this year, the prevalence of two types of bacteria resistant to drugs.

Do you want to guess the percentage of injuries that impacted patients in US healthcare?

• 15%
• 11.5%
• 1.15%
• 0.115%

The answer, after the jump...

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS