External quality assurance experience with Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Program at an academic hospital in South Africa.

Introduction: Laboratories use their performance in external quality assurance (EQA) to establish quality planning strategies and to assess whether testing processes require improvement.

Methods: The EQA performance of the hematology and coagulation test parameters on the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia EQA program was evaluated over a 4-year cycle at an academic hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. The test performance was determined from analytical quality specification (APS) and/or z-scores.