Effective Access to Laboratory Test Results: A Health Equity Issue that Enhances Diagnostic Excellence.

Access to laboratory test results through patient portals is a health equity issue for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), particularly for Spanish-speaking patients, the largest minority group in the USA. Gaps ranging from linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic disparities to lack of systematic approaches (e.g.

Bringing the clinical laboratory into the strategy to advance diagnostic excellence.

Objectives: Clinical laboratory testing provides essential data for making medical diagnoses. Generating accurate and timely test results clearly communicated to the treating clinician, and ultimately the patient, is a critical component that supports diagnostic excellence. On the other hand, failure to achieve this can lead to diagnostic errors that manifest in missed, delayed and wrong diagnoses.

Effectiveness of Practices to Support Appropriate Laboratory Test Utilization: A Laboratory Medicine Best Practices Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of practices used to support appropriate clinical laboratory test utilization.

Methods: This review followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Laboratory Medicine Best Practices A6 cycle method. Eligible studies assessed one of the following practices for effect on outcomes relating to over- or underutilization: computerized provider order entry (CPOE), clinical decision support systems/tools (CDSS/CDST), education, feedback, test review, reflex testing, laboratory test utilization (LTU) teams, and any combination of these practices.

Effectiveness of Practices To Increase Timeliness of Providing Targeted Therapy for Inpatients with Bloodstream Infections: a Laboratory Medicine Best Practices Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Bloodstream infection (BSI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Rapid identification of bloodstream pathogens is a laboratory practice that supports strategies for rapid transition to direct targeted therapy by providing for timely and effective patient care. In fact, the more rapidly that appropriate antimicrobials are prescribed, the lower the mortality for patients with sepsis.

Effectiveness of practices to reduce blood culture contamination: a Laboratory Medicine Best Practices systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: This article is a systematic review of the effectiveness of three practices for reducing blood culture contamination rates: venipuncture, phlebotomy teams, and prepackaged preparation/collection (prep) kits.

Design And Methods: The CDC-funded Laboratory Medicine Best Practices Initiative systematic review methods for quality improvement practices were used.

Results: Studies included as evidence were: 9 venipuncture (vs.

Identification of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain with stable, low-level resistance to isoniazid.

We have identified a potential quality control strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to monitor isoniazid susceptibility testing. This strain (strain A) has a stable phenotypic low-level resistance to isoniazid, has a mutation of C (-15) --> T in the inhA promoter region, and gave consistent susceptibility test results in 141 laboratories.