Back - left to right: Donnah Pocius, Colleen Knapp, Donna Meekel, Christine Collier, Dick Zoutman, Sandy Boag, Harriet Feilotter, Dilys Rapson Front - left to right: Lis Andersen, Sandip SenGupta, Victor Tron, Joyce deVette-McPhail Absent Cathie Trayner Faculty Dick Zoutman, MD – Clinical Director

Quality has always been a central focus of the practice of Laboratory Medicine. It takes many forms: Quality control of day to day work activities to ensure reliability and accuracy of testing and Quality assurance with excellent documentation and tracking of specific parameters of the work performed. Quality Improvement is a robust body of knowledge concerning itself with the analysis, implementation and continuous measurement of system performance with one ultimate goal in mind: to provide the customer, ie the patient, with the highest quality of laboratory diagnostic service.

We use the Institute of Medicine's definition of Quality: quality is achieved when the service provided is patient-centered, timely, safe, effective, efficient and equitable.

The Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine seeks to achieve excellence in all of its services through defining high priority areas for improvement, measuring performance in a rigorous manner, conducting thorough analysis of our performance, implementing changes to improve our systems' performance and reduce waste, and critically to establish required controls throughout the diagnostic laboratory processes to achieve ever increasing levels of quality. Quality improvement is a continuous journey of learning.

To learn more about Queen's Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine Quality Improvement program please contact us.

Dick Zoutman, MD Professor Clinical Director, Quality Improvement zoutmand(at) kgh.kari.net