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Pan-Canadian Quality Assurance Recommendations

November 16, 2016

The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Pathologists have released Pan-Canadian Quality Assurance Recommendations for Interpretive Pathology.

This is Canada’s first effort to develop a framework of quality recommendations for interpretive pathology that can be implemented into existing and developing provincial pathology quality assurance programs.

The framework includes:

• Foundational elements that need to be in place to support a quality system for interpretive pathology;
• Internal Quality Assurance Policies and Procedures (QAPP) that need to be in place to assure interpretive quality assurance;
• A section on the pathology testing cycle – interpretive phase from the prospective lens
• External quality assurance in the form of either external quality assessment (proficiency testing) and pathologists’ peer review assessment;
• Recommended approaches to situations where there has been an “expression of concern” regarding a pathologist’s performance.

A PDF of the quality document can be found here