| Publication Type |
thesis |
| School or College |
School of Medicine |
| Department |
Biomedical Informatics |
| Author |
del Junco, Deborah Joan |
| Title |
Use of guidelines in evaluating the effectiveness of clinical laboratory improvement programs: a meta analysis |
| Date |
1980-08 |
| Description |
Formal clinical laboratory improvement programs have been seeded by incendiary reports of fraud and error in diagnostic laboratories and the accompanying fear of public outrage. These programs are perpetuated by an intuitive notion that they foster quality health care, and that without them, conditions would be intolerable. The real efficacy of clinical laboratory improvement programs is debatable. When improvements in performance have been documented, the evaluation designs have not supported ironclad causal inferences. This retrospective research examined the technical adequacy of 23 proposed and two completed evaluations of federally funded clinical laboratory improvement programs. The review process used throughout this research is referred to as meta analysis, which is a categorical term that means evaluation of evaluations or evaluation audit. Proficiency testing, technical consultation, and training were the three general approaches to laboratory improvement. A checklist of 31 evaluation guidelines was developed for the purposes of the review and for future use by program directors and funding agencies. The data indicate that federally funded laboratory improvement programs continue to use technically weak evaluations. There were no significant differences in overall technical adequacy between the three types of programs. However, there were significant differences between types of program proposals on 13 of the 31 individual checklist items. Eight of the 13 items were directly related to differences in requirements among the funding agent's three requests for proposals. The results suggest that the funding agent is in the best position to raise the technical quality of laboratory improvement program evaluation so that valid inferences as to program impact can be made and potentially worthwhile programs can be perfected. |
| Type |
Text |
| Publisher |
University of Utah |
| Subject |
Standards |
| Subject MESH |
Laboratory Techniques and Procedures; Evaluation Studies; Task Performance and Analysis; Technology, Medical |
| Dissertation Institution |
University of Utah |
| Dissertation Name |
MS |
| Language |
eng |
| Relation is Version of |
Digital reproduction of "The Use of guidelines in evaluating the effectiveness of clinical laboratory improvement programs: a meta analysis". Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library. Print version of "The Use of guidelines in evaluating the effectiveness of clinical laboratory improvement programs: a meta analysis". available at J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collection. RA 4.5 1980 D44. |
| Rights Management |
© Deborah Joan del Junco. |
| Format Medium |
application/pdf |
| Format Extent |
2,068,784 bytes |
| Identifier |
undthes,4451 |
| Source |
Original: University of Utah Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library (no longer available). |
| Master File Extent |
2,068,893 bytes |
| ARK |
ark:/87278/s6zw1npc |
| Setname |
ir_etd |
| ID |
190878 |
| Reference URL |
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6zw1npc |
