South Island Quality Assurance Groups for Biochemistry and Haematology

South Island Quality Assurance Groups (SIQAG) for Biochemistry and Haematology were established in 2008 / 2009 as part of a comparability project between Canterbury Health Laboratories, Southern Community Laboratories, Med Lab South and Grey Hospital Laboratory. This project was completed as part of a larger programme of work looking at the development of a regional results repository in the Canterbury region, similar to the Test Safe model adopted in Auckland.

The scope of work was initially limited to tests from the Health PAC schedule though it was agreed that other tests identified by this group could be reviewed.

Consultants and senior Medical Laboratory Scientists from each discipline met and pragmatically assessed tests for comparability.

In order to ensure that results reported to a regional repository would cumulate and display correctly, each test that was deemed comparable had the following reviewed and agreed;

• Name (standardised to LOINC recommendation).
• reference interval.
• units.
• number of decimal places reported.
• LOINC code.

Labnet partners, Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay, which share the Delphic Laboratory System with Canterbury Health Laboratories, were consulted during the sign-off process to ensure that proposed reference intervals could be implemented across all laboratory sites.

Reference intervals for Haematology proposed by the Northern Haematology Quality Assurance Group (NorthQAG) and reference intervals proposed for Biochemistry by the Auckland Regional Quality Assurance Group (ARQAG) were also reviewed with a view to agreeing ranges nationally where possible.