Quality assurance and improvement monitors
| EM, electron microscopy; FISH, fluorescent in situ hybridisation; IHC, immunohistochemistry. |
| Pre-analytic |
| Specimen fixation |
| Specimen delivery |
| Specimen identification |
| Adequacy of clinical history |
| Accessioning errors |
| Analytic |
| Intra-operative |
| Frozen section – permanent section concordance |
| Final diagnosis |
| Peer review error rate |
| Histology and gross room monitors |
| Block labelling errors |
| Slide labelling errors |
| Slide quality |
| Immunohistochemistry |
| Frequency of repeat slides |
| Annual inventory of antibodies and frequency of use |
| External validation of selected antibodies |
| Other ancillary study monitors include monitors for FISH, EM, other molecular studies |
| Post-analytic |
| Transcription errors |
| Verification errors |
| Report delivery errors |
| Incomplete reports |
| Diagnostic finding correlation with ancillary studies (IHC, EM, FISH) |
| Turnaround time (TAT) |
| Frozen section |
| Biopsy |
| Large specimen |
| Preliminary and final necropsy reports |
| Clinician satisfaction and/or complaints |
| Overall satisfaction |
| Diagnostic accuracy |
| Frozen section timeliness and accuracy |
| Report timeliness |
| Report completeness |
| Pathologist availability |
| Recent changes |