Milwaukee Laboratory System Improvement Program (L-SIP).

The Laboratory System Improvement Program (L-SIP) of the Association of Public Health Laboratories aims to improve state public health laboratory (PHL) system performance through continuous quality improvement. We successfully applied this state assessment tool to a local PHL (LPHL) system by tailoring it to reflect local system needs and created an LPHL system definition explaining how a local system differs from, yet complements, a state system. On November 18, 2010, 75 stakeholders from 40 agencies assessed the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, PHL system, capturing themes, strengths and weaknesses of the system, and scores for each of the 10 Essential Public Health Services.